this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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They made one, and they called it the BZ4X. That's the sort of name that you give a car you don't want people to buy. And in the event anyone did buy buy it, they made sure the wheels fell off.
By contrast they literally call their hydrogen car the future, so it's clear where their priorities lie.
I'm sure they're working on EVs behind the scenes for mainstream release once other companies iron out the quirks, while the Murai is a long-term development platform. Let's not forget Toyota dove headfirst into hybrids 23 years ago while other companies were developing shit like the Hummer H2 and the Excursion. People act like Toyota hates EVs but they're just very conservative in their designs because their brand has a reputation for being reliable and economical. Compare that with early Teslas costing $100k and having terrible QC issues. Nobody wants that from a Toyota.
Honestly that is what makes the most sense to me. They are known as the slow adopter of technology. So they're just playing the long game by waiting to jump into the BEV world head first once they let the market shake out the first few hurdles. Plus it lets them wait on purchasing Lithium, which is currently in a huge bubble. So from the c-suite, it makes perfect sense to play coy with BEVs right now.
They've announced a lot of EVs are in the works but they'll also keep offering hybrids and FCEVs. They kind of have to our they'll lose the European market.
And they have also announced that their EVs will use the same naming scheme as the BZ4X. Toyota has good, distinct, and memorable names for everything other than their EVs.
The choice to identify their EVs by a catalog number instead of a name, shows that they're only making EVs because they have to.