In December 2021, Toyota held a global electric vehicle strategy press conference for the group brand through online live broadcast, and expected the group to reach the sales target of 3.5 million electric vehicles per year in 2030, Lexus expected to reach the sales target of 1 million electric vehicles in 2030, and in Europe, North America, China and other regions is expected to provide Lexus's full range of electric vehicle sales lineup in 2030, and transform into a pure electric luxury car brand in 2035.
In addition to the new pure electric crossover SUV RZ revealed earlier, Lexus also includes the electrified Sedan four-door pure electric coupe, the Electrified SUV large pure electric sports SUV and the Electrified Sport double-door pure electric coupe, as well as a number of special models including hunting and convertible. Lexus also officially released the RZ series on April 20, 2022, opening a new chapter for lexus brand pure electrification products.
Although Lexus's pure electric product plan has been officially launched, according to the current Lexus only UX 300e and RZ car series that has not yet officially started mass production, and only a few thousand pure electric car sales in 2021, there is still a long way to go to achieve the goal of producing and selling million pure electric vehicles in 2030, and it must be completed within 8 years, which is not an easy task for a luxury car brand that is not pure electric at this stage.
According to the latest foreign media reports, Takashi Watanabe, chief engineer of Lexus brand electrification, said in an interview a few days ago that in order to achieve the sales target of one million pure electric vehicles in 2030, in addition to the need to actively develop new pure electric products, the comprehensive innovation of the production line is also a very important issue, especially from the traditional internal combustion engine to pure electric automobile manufacturing process, which greatly increases the cost of vehicle production and manufacturing, so Lexus is a top priority. It is to innovate the manufacturing process of the vehicle and reduce the production cost of the battery, thereby reducing the cost of the brand's electrification transformation.
In the face of the above-mentioned transformation problems, Takashi Watanabe, chief engineer of Lexus brand electrification, proposed two solutions, the first is to seek more shared resources from the Toyota brand, which includes parts of vehicle manufacturing and production lines, the first is the RZ series, which will be manufactured on the common new car production line with Toyota bZ4X and Subaru Solterra, which can significantly reduce the production cost of pure electric new cars, and so the model of sharing production lines. It is also expected to appear in lexus' follow-up launch of more pure electric new car products.
Another solution is to change the hybrid production mode of gasoline, oil power and pure electricity on the existing new car production line, so the new car mixed line production mode has actually appeared in the production line of UX new cars, but in the face of the new generation of Lexus pure electric models including chassis, power and many design parts, all of which cannot be shared with the current model, it is also possible to develop an independent pure tram production line in the existing factory, which is also a possible way to reduce production costs.
Therefore, in the face of the rapid launch and strong competition of many luxury pure electric new car products in the market, Lexus is bound to accelerate the popularity of pure electric new car products, otherwise it will be difficult to resist the electric energy army of other brands.