Featured Toyota’s Cheapest EV Ever Costs $15,000, Gets 10,000 Orders In 60 Minutes

The problem is taking the range they give you from an easy test. I have no idea what it would do on the EPA. Even if its 120 mpge if the battery is big enough and charges fast enough at the low price point it will be a winner in china. My guess is byd and the Chinese government are subsidizing this greatly. I doubt we will ever see this car in the US, but maybe toyota will learn things and bring better EVs to the US. The definitely are not going to be sucessful with fuel cells.

 

...about that... I've been reading that Chinese manufacturers are becoming increasingly hesitant about setting up factories in Mexico, the US & Canada because they are increasingly concerned that American carmakers will steal their designs & technology.

Makes sense now that they're pulling ahead.

Beyond that, they don't need to care that much about the American market. It's pretty small compared to what they'll eventually be selling in the EMEA markets.

 

Well, the bZ4x now starts at $36k, not considering future tariffs. The bZ3s weren't designed for markets outside China, so a hypothetical US model would need to be modified for the vehicle code here. It'll be less than the 4X. I think a price difference along the lines of what is between the Corolla Cross and Rav4 would happen.

 

The american car market was before the tarrifs the second largest in the world after china. The european car market is shrinking. Chinese car makers absolutely want to be in the American market. But no the chinese are not concerned that american car makers will steel their designs and tech. That is simply a talking point because the chinese take american tech. GM, VW, Toyota, etc are in joint ventures and can easily get chinese designs and parts.

Likely plans for american factories are being scrapped because of market uncertainty given the new policies every day from the US government. These steel and aluminum tarrifs, and tarrifs of parts from mexico and china, may make ford cheap enough that a chinese company just buys them and uses their factories. No car company is making new investments until they see what the government really is going to do and if we are going to have a shrinking auto market like europe.

The bz4x price is likely one for competition, toyota will lose money on each one until they redesign. They feel like they have to get some experience with EVs in the US market, and the losses are part of this education. They need to sell at least a decent number. I seriously doubt they will try to bring this thing to market, but they may use the experience to make a better ev for the US market.

 

Pretend you are a car company CEO that wants to enter the US or even North American market.

Build a factory? How many billions and how long before the factory is producing?

Build a distribution, parts and service structure. How many billions and how long before the market is covered?

Design a car for the ever changing regulatory environment. How to get managers, engineers, lawyers and the like familiar with the US rules as they evolve.

Acquire suppliers in an ever changing tariff environment.

Develop a design and programming team. Time to deliver?

Absorb those sunk costs until the volume of vehicle sales supports profits and ROI.....

 

To be honest, I have my doubts the two existing vehicle manufacturers will remain in shareholder hands.

My guess is it will be like Putin and his govt investment in Gazprom, nationalise and then syphon money out to hide away somewhere it can't be touched ..... what US govt dept will be left to scrutinise anything? Ban and tax imports to the point only the uber rich cod afford to buy a non Trump manufactured vehicle

As far as the Toyota Bz4x and the Subaru Solterra, the Subaru is actually a badge engineered Toyota, only available in the two motor version.

Musk will have to decide if he remains in either China or the USA as a car manufacturer, my guess is he will spin them off so he can concentrate on things the US govt will pay him top $$ to do .....well, as long as the govt stays out of going belly up ..... The rate the rest of the world are dumping their US bonds, there isn't a lot of faith it can avoid defaulting on it's loans (US bonds)

T1 Terry

 

You can't go, all the plants are gonna die.

 

World Wide if you want answers to financials the Big Four has them, but it's unlikely they will reveal them to anyone that doesn't use one of them,
and than only in regards to said account(s).

Gotta love how indemnification works.

 

Remember the words to Hotel California, .... unless of course you are Mexican and can hide your papers ...... are they deporting Canadians yet?
I'd go for being an illegal Aust immigrant, but I'd make sure all your stuff is in containers and on the ship, the house is sold and you have the gold bars carefully wrapped in the furniture in the containers that are on the ship ..... You can live in your Prius until they come to collect you, no point in bringing that over here, they won't let you drive on the wrong side of the road over here

T1 Terry

 

Why? Don't they have any picket lines, protests vandalism or first seat violins where you are from?

 

A couple of legally working Canadian folk singers who have been doing their act in the USA for years were pulled over in Ohio.
When the cop saw that they were Canadian,
A big bru ha ha followed.
They were eventually released, but that’s a state I’d be avoiding if I were traveling

 

The Lucid motor is insanely efficient, (as is the new VW motor just now going into production - Bob just linked to it) - so others have a very high hurdle to reach to achieve that kind of efficiency.
That said, the OP's link of many many orders has to kind of make one smirk - in that not too long ago, Toyota was saying no one wants an ev ... one of their infamous ads boasting and Evie is for those who have 4hrs to kill.
Very glad to see them finally back pedaling
.

 

Even if it did it has a 50 or 58kwhr battery

Based on its shape and weight the “range” is mythical likely being around ~200 miles at best on us highways after federalization.

EVs with 60kwhr and smaller batteries do not typically garner a premium price in the us being considered mostly as interlata vehicles and they also lack demand , meaning that $20k or less is likely all anyone would spend but demand still could be very meh.

 

As tech advanced, it became worth it for them. The ROI on spearheading EV technology and design, when they had super fuel efficient hybrids and had the jump on that, plus the simplicity and relative cost, was probably why they didn't want to push EVs. The Japanese government was putting a lot of money into Hydrogen R&D. Toyota likely sunk a lot of money into their hybrid tech, so pivoting from hybrid to straight EV in the R&D department, when the government was subsidizing something else very heavily, was likely not worth it to them in the short term. Hopefully they keep adding and improving to their EV lineup and we can get more options in north america and europe too. Though with the auto-tariff brouhaha, the NA market may face challenges. Canada and mexico aren't huge markets and if the USA won't bring models to the continent... its gonna be tough :/

I just want an EV to not be floating at 60k CAD new. Used they depreciate a lot, sure, but I am the kind of person that if I want to spend even 35-40k CAD, on a *used* car, thats enough to make me wary. Did they apply appropriate rust prevention to slow down rust which kills cars where I live thanks to salt? Did they manage the battery well and not abuse it so I can trust that it will last 10 years at least? Many issues and perhaps unfounded fears on that end. If I could get a new EV for around 40 to 45k CAD before taxes, I'd be happy. That would be around what, 30-33k USD? Something around the price range of the Prius Prime we got. That's kind of where our budget reaches, so a new sedan or compact crossover like an ioniq5, or polestar 2 sized car, would be great. I'm hoping we get there in the next few years.

 

Toyota and Honda themselves were pushing for hydrogen. It wasn't just the government calling for it. Toyota made some complaints a few years ago when the Japanese government announced more board support to alternative fuels and backing off hydrogen some.

Japan's grid isn't set up the best to support BEVs and long range PHEVs. So hydrogen and FCEVs make some sense, plus the countries size means lower price tag for the infrastructure. The problem is they need to sell the FCEVs in numbers higher than the domestic market could support in order to get the fuel cell prices down. Then nuclear power fell out of favor there, which meant an end to carbon free domestic hydrogen.

 

From how you describe it, it kind of lines up with my idea about hydrogen and subsidies though. Japan was supporting it heavily, and then they scaled back, so now its not as worth it and toyota and honda are moving away from it too.

I'm sure, as is the case with so many things, there was lobbying to push hydrogen from honda and toyota too, and the government was receptive and probably explored it early and they ping ponged back and forth to support the research. Things change. That was really my point. And of course, all that money leaving the R&D space, and less commitment to hydrogen, after honda and toyota put so much time on it, of course they'll lobby to keep the support for it.

 

If by not worth it you mean government paying them to do the R&D? It was NEVER worth it for automotive transportation. When others dole out the money though, unfortunately then it's worth it -

 

Toyota has just moved their support more to trucking, but there is a FCEV version of the Crown sedan coming out. They have also started to develop hydrogen engines as a way to support hydrogen for cars. It should have been done earlier though.

In Japan, the government started a Low Emission Vehicle program with industry. Basic research started in the 1970s, and eventually got to subsidizing EVs and hybrids(including the gen1 Prius) around the time the EV1 was available. The results with EVs has created a group think in the industry that the public only wants short range, city car BEVs. Which resulted in the iQ EV.

At the time EVs only had lead acid and NiMH as choices for batteries. So hydrogen and fuel cells(Nissan did ethanol) seemed the only option for longer ranges. But battery tech advanced faster than fuel cell. Toyota remained blind to this, and delayed investment for BEVs.

 

It might have been worth it. It might be worth it for smaller engines to use hydrogen fuel cells to be used in generators for emergency scenarios. You kinda need to start somewhere. Fully developing the Mirai was probably not worth it in retrospect but at the time they started I couldn't say. Sometimes you need to try and ultimately fail to determine its not worth doing something. Reducing risk for possible upside is something the government should do. For every big successful research endeavour many failures happened along the way. Without shouldering some of the risk, much of private industry wouldn't make efforts beyond very small incremental improvements. Comes with the territory.

Now, knowing what we know today, and knowing Toyota was already on the electrified vehicle research track, if Japan had been big on EV research rather than hydrogen, we'd probably be further ahead globally on EV production than we are today. Since they were one of the first to shove a battery in a car for mass production, they could have made more progress on that front. Honda was right there with them too with the insight. The detour towards hydrogen was a mistake in retrospect. But hindsight is 20/20.