Toyota's electric concept SUV will land in the United States before its launch in 2022
Think of it as a more beautiful and spacious all-electric RAV4. In 2015, its journey to the United States has begun. The automaker confirmed yesterday that the concept car has officially landed at its headquarters in Plano, Texas, and plans to start selling corner crossovers in the United States sometime next year. (Hope it will have fewer tongue twisters when it arrives.)
“Roughly the size of a RAV4, with the versatility to stand apart from other BEVs, it will be well-positioned in the sweet spot of the market,” said Lisa Materazzo, VP of Toyota Marketing in a press release.
When you consider the fact that Toyota routinely sells north of 400,000 RAV4s in the United States alone each year, it’s perhaps no surprise that the automaker expect the bZ4X BEV to do well around here. That said, there are some key differences in design here that give the bZ4X a more spacious, free-flowing feel — the instrument cluster, for example, is set further back from the steering wheel than in most vehicles, and that sits a bigger-than-norma
That clean, open cabin sits atop the company’s new e-TNGA platform, which was developed in partnership with Subaru — Toyota reportedly contributed its expertise in EVs while Subaru applied its considerable 4WD know-how. (To no one’s surprise, Subaru plans to ship an electric SUV of its own called the Solterra based on the same framework.)
As Toyota pointed out in 2019, the e-TNGA platform is designed to be modular: the positions of the front and rear motors are fixed, just like the width of the battery and driving The position of the driver relative to the front wheel, but “the wheelbase, the number of batteries installed, the overhang and other elements can be changed.” Unfortunately, Toyota did not publicly talk about the moving speed of its first e-TNGA EV, so we have to wait until Automakers have become more talkative.
