Toyota will launch an all-electric design and engineering concept study next week. The firm is … [+]
toyota
The world’s biggest automaker has teased its first ever global electric vehicle (EV) with a sneak picture released today ahead of next week’s launch.
The X Prologue will be the first Toyota EV concept released outside China for the notoriously EV-shy Japanese automaking giant.
Even then, Toyota snubbed North America, posting the link to the reveal only on its European site, which may indicate that its first production EV outside China will be Europe-only.
To quash speculation of the X Prologue being anything more than a design and engineering study, though, Toyota has previously confirmed its first outside-China EV will be RAV4-sized, and the X Prologue compact SUV seems considerably smaller.
Toyota has also applied for trademarks in Japan for the BZ1 to BZ5 badges, with “BZ” being an acronym for “Beyond Zero”.
Very late to the EV party, Toyota has been derisive of battery electric vehicles until recently, insisting that hybrid, plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and hydrogen fuel cell (FCEV) vehicles were all more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Last year it announced it would accelerate its EV push to meet public expectations, with 10 new EV models and a million EV sales a year by 2030, all based on a new e-TNCA electric architecture developed and shared with Subaru.
The new architecture will be modular for length and width, and will also be available in front-, rear- and all-wheel drive variants, and is even capable of having electric motors at the front, the rear or both.
The company will reveal the car on the www.x-prologue.com website on March 17 at 10am CET (there is a countdown clock on the site in the meantime).
