Toyota premieres Toyota-brand battery electric vehicles ahead of 2020 China launch
16 April 2019
Toyota premiered its C-HR and IZOA battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as part of its activities on the opening day of Auto Shanghai 2019. The C-HR and IZOA will be the first battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) to launch in China under the Toyota brand. Sales on the new models are slated to start from 2020.
C-HR / IZOA EV
Toyota’s other booth exhibits at the show include a variety of electrified vehicles, such as the debut of hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) variants for the RAV4 and the Alphard/Vellfire in China, as well as the Corolla and Levin plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) series that were launched in March 2019.
Toyota also showed the RHOMBUS, a battery electric vehicle concept car developed by TMEC, Toyota’s base for R&D in China. The RHOMBUS aims to suit the values and lifestyles of drivers born after 1990.
Beginning with the China debut of the electrified C-HR and IZOA vehicle models, Toyota plans to roll out more than ten BEV models globally during the first half of the 2020s, and has set a sales target of more than 5.5 million electrified vehicles globally by 2030.
As of the end of February 2019, Toyota has sold nearly 13 million electrified vehicles worldwide since the initial launch of Prius, a hybrid electric vehicle, in 1997. The volume of vehicles represents a reduction in global CO2 emissions of more than 103 million tons.
In November 2018, at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai, Toyota proposed a new mobility concept that aims to support peoples’ lives through leveraging electrification, intelligence, and informatization, such as with the e-Pallete.
Toyota has plans to use the new mobility concept for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020. Furthermore, the company also plans to endeavor to make the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 a success by utilizing the knowledge it gains from the Tokyo 2020 Games and working in collaboration with the International Olympic Committee, International Paralympic Committee, and the Organising Committee of the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 and Paralympic Games.
'In China, the country most aggressively pursuing the adoption of EVs and home to the world’s largest auto market, some of the industry’s biggest names believe pure battery electric cars will be as cheap as gasoline counterparts by 2025.
Those making that prediction include Ouyang Minggao, executive vice president of the EV100 forum, a think tank which is widely seen as the de facto voice of government policy.
“The turning point is coming. We believe that around 2025, the price of pure electric vehicles will achieve a big breakthrough,” he said in a speech in January.
Ouyang cited a reduction in battery costs to $100 per kilowatt hours from $150-$200 currently and a planned tightening of emissions rules in China which will make gasoline vehicles there more expensive.
But others in the EV industry are less optimistic.
“Chinese policymakers think EVs will become more like conventional gasoline cars as early as 2025. But that’s naive and all automaker engineers would agree with me,” said a veteran EV engineer at Honda Motor Co.
“Sure, there’s an EV boom but hybrids and plug-in hybrids will be needed as bridging technologies,” he said.
The engineer was one of five interviewed by Reuters for this article who believe it will take a decade before battery EVs achieve cost and performance parity with gasoline cars. Most were not authorised to speak to media and declined to identified when describing the shortcomings of EV technology.'
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' the engineers who spoke with Reuters caution that even if battery unit costs are brought down to $100/kWh, this would not necessarily translate into a steep decline in vehicle costs.
That’s because the investment to improve battery quality needs to be factored in, while the cars also need sophisticated battery management systems to prevent overheating and overcharging - adding thousands of dollars to their cost.
Toyota Motor Corp, which does not have a pure EV on the market currently, says it is concerned about battery durability. Battery capacity can drop by half over 5-10 years - the reason for low EV resale values, said Shigeki Terashi, executive vice president in charge of Toyota’s EV strategy.
“Falling EV battery capacity is not a major issue in China now because sales there have only recently begun, but in time this problem will likely become more evident,” he told Reuters in a interview.'
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'Bereisa thinks battery costs could achieve parity with gasoline cars by the late 2020s but his verdict on fast fuelling parity is “maybe never”.
“It’s physics,” he said, adding that to charge an EV with the same amount of energy in the same amount of time as a gasoline car, you’d need a charger powerful “enough to run a small city”.'
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-autoshow-shanghai-electric-insight/the-uphill-road-battery-limitations-to-test-chinas-electric-vehicle-ambitions-idUKKCN1RS06T
Posted by: Davemart | 16 April 2019 at 08:24 AM
People who want long lasting (25,000+ hours or 1,500,000 Km) all weather extended range (over 500 Km) and ultra quick charge (under 5 minutes) electrified vehicles can buy existing and future FCEVs from Toyota, Honda or Hyundai?
Posted by: HarveyD | 16 April 2019 at 11:38 AM
VW ID3 (neo) with a range of 330km (WLTP) will cost 24000 €. That's the same as a gas Golf with 150 ps. The version with 550km range will be over 200 ps and have a price of ca. 30 000€, a little less than the Basis version of the Tesla 3.
So Chinese are wrong, it will not be in 2025 but in 2020!!!
https://de.motor1.com/news/297990/vw-id-alias-neo-daten/
Posted by: shuta chantal | 16 April 2019 at 04:35 PM
I will believe it when I see it available for sale.
Posted by: GasperG | 16 April 2019 at 11:23 PM
Higher performance, lower cost , ultra quick charge, longer lasting batteries may be what Toyota has been waiting to mass produce affordable EVs.
However, that may not happen much before 2025 unless Chinese manufacturers beat the world market to it? They could produce both the lighter vehicles and batteries required.
Posted by: HarveyD | 17 April 2019 at 09:30 AM
EVs with modular plug in LEASED battery packs could already meet the total operation cost of equivalent ICEVs, specially where clean low cost electricity (from REs such as Hydro-Wind-Solar) is available and fossil fuel is costly.
Being able to select the size of the LEASED battery pack, to meet individual requirements, would further reduce the total operation cost and allow latter upgrades, for lower cost and higher performance LEASED battery packs.
Partially used/outdated LEASED battery packs could be recycled for use as low cost fixed storage units.
Posted by: HarveyD | 19 April 2019 at 07:18 AM