Toyota’s first EV will be "expensive"

Toyota Australia says its first EV, the Toyota bZ4X electric SUV will be “expensive” when it arrives here, hopefully within months of its mid-2022 global launch.

Unveiled as a mildly disguised concept in Shanghai yesterday, the RAV4-size all-wheel drive SUV is the first model from Toyota’s new bZ – beyond Zero – EV sub-brand.

It is the first EV that Toyota Australia will sell and one of 15 purely battery-powered models the Japanese car-maker plans to launch globally by 2025 – split between seven bZ models and eight other models. A number of them will come to Australia.

Speaking at an automotive media roundtable this morning to follow up the global reveal and local release confirmation of the bZ4X yesterday, Toyota Australia marketing and sales chief Sean Hanley said the zero-emissions medium SUV would not be cheap.

“Pricing will be announced closer to introduction but this car will be expensive, as was the original Prius [hybrid] that we launched back in October 2001,” he said.

“This is due to significant research and development cost recovery. Like hybrids, battery-electric vehicle adoption and affordability will take time, but certainly not 20 years.

“They will eventually become a sustainable means of mobility but the energy mix, battery technology and infrastructure are still being developed.”

Pressed during the Q&A to be more specific about what “expensive” meant and where the bZ4X would sit in relation to the RAV4, which tops out at $46,415 plus on-road costs for the AWD hybrid Cruiser, Hanley was unco-operative.

“I don’t have any feel for where that car sits,” he said.

“I honestly don’t know. Anything I gave you right now would be pure speculative guessing.”

Hanley accepted that high pricing would see the bZ4X sell in only small numbers. But he again invoked the example of the Prius to explain the rationale for selling it here, as well as referencing the hydrogen fuel-cell powered Toyota Mirai released to local fleet buyers last week.

“I think we sold between 100 and 200 [Prius vehicles] in the first year. A lot of those Priuses were targeted at very specific customers, particularly fleets,” he said.

“The whole idea, as per Mirai in the last few days, is to put those cars out there, get people speaking about them, get people comfortable with the technology, to be able to demonstrate the technology.

“This will take a while to mature, but it won’t take 20 years to mature like hybrid did. I think you will see electrification fast-track over the next decade.

“From Toyota’s perspective, it will broaden our product horizon, broaden our product offering and therefore as scale builds affordability becomes more realistic as well.”

Toyota Australia sold 54,000 hybrid vehicles in 2020 and has committed to offering an electrified version of all its models – bar the high-performance GRs – by 2030. It refused to say how many EVs would be in the line-up by then.

Toyota Australia product planning chief Rod Ferguson confirmed the local arrival hopes for BZ4X and the plan to expand into other EV models.

“We will try and get that car as soon as possible after mid-2022 if and when it goes on global sale,” he said.

“I’d like to think it’s months compared to years. We are targeting months.

“In terms of the seven BZ vehicles announced yesterday by TMC, some of those will be applicable to the Australian market and we will work through them one by one and make announcements as we head towards that.

“There will be some of those, but not all of them will be for the Australian market,” said Ferguson.

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