According to Reuters, Toyota is considering restarting its electric vehicle strategy to better compete in the booming market. Four people with knowledge of the still-developing plans said Toyota has been slow to enter the market and has halted some work on existing electric-car projects.
If the new strategy is adopted, the proposals under review would make a dramatic turnaround for Toyota and rewrite its $38 billion electric vehicle rollout plan announced last year to better compete with the likes of Tesla.
A task force within Toyota is tasked with outlining plans for improvements to its existing EV platform or new architecture by early next year, the four people said. Meanwhile, Toyota has suspended work on some of the 30 electric vehicle projects it announced in December.
The report said that for this news, Toyota said it would be committed to carbon neutrality, but declined to comment on specific measures.
As part of the review, Toyota is considering launching the next generation of its 2019 e-TNGA electric vehicle pure-electric platform, which would allow Toyota to cut costs, people familiar with the matter said. The first e-TNGA-based electric car, the Toyota bZ4X, which hit the market earlier this year, was hit by a recall that halted production from June and resumed production earlier this month.
The scrutiny was partly motivated by a realization by some Toyota engineers and executives that Toyota was losing out to Tesla in a factory cost war for electric vehicles, the sources said.
Toyota designed the e-TNGA so that it could be built on the same assembly lines as gasoline and hybrid vehicles, the four people said. But EV sales are growing faster than Toyota expects, and by 2030, EVs are expected to account for more than half of total vehicle production.
Toyota is considering extending the e-TNGA’s usefulness by combining it with new technology, three sources said, and even the review suggests phasing out the e-TNGA sooner and opting to design an EV-specific platform from the ground up. The new model could take about five years, two of the sources said.
Toyota is working with suppliers and considering factory innovations to reduce costs, such as Tesla’s Giga Press, a large casting machine that simplifies work at Tesla’s factories.
One area Toyota is reviewing is a more comprehensive approach to electric vehicle thermal management, such as combining passenger air conditioning and electric powertrain temperature control, the sources said. That could allow Toyota to reduce the size and weight of EV battery packs and cut the cost of each vehicle by thousands of dollars, one of the people said.
