Toyota Has No Plans to Build the Super-Affordable Electric Car America Needs

Toyota has been slow to adopt EVs thus far; the bZ4X is currently the brand’s only offering. But that should change soon. Toyota will soon be launching a new three-row EV crossover and potentially debuting not one but two electric trucks — a unibody Ford Maverick rival and an electric Tacoma — for the U.S. market.

However, one electric vehicle you’d expect Toyota to build — a super-affordable electric take on the Corolla — may not be coming anytime soon. Andrea Carlucci, Toyota’s European head of product development, recently told Autocar that the brand had no plans to offer a super-affordable (~$25,000) EV along the lines of what Tesla has proposed. He noted that doing so would require a “substantial shift in the cost of batteries.”

Toyota’s Urban SUV, expected to start at around $40,000 in Britain, is expected to be Toyota’s cheapest EV. We suspect Toyota’s upcoming EV offerings will slot above the bZ4X, which currently starts at $43,070.

Toyota

Toyota not making a super-cheap EV right now isn’t that surprising

Impressive as Toyota’s engineers and product planners are, they aren’t miracle workers. Building a truly affordable EV would be tough for them because, well, the price of batteries means affordable EVs don’t really exist yet — and probably won’t exist in America for some time. Chevy discontinued the Bolt EV at the end of 2023. The cheapest EV that offers enough range to not considered as a “city car” in America (in other words, offering comfortably over 200 miles on a charge) is the 2024 Hyundai Kona EV, which offers 261 miles of range starting at $32,675.

Toyota

But Toyota is working on the technology to build super-cheap EVs … eventually

Toyota aims to spearhead the required “substantial shift in the cost of batteries.” The carmaker has made headlines with plans to offer solid-state batteries that could eventually top 900 miles of range, nbut equally vital for Toyota will be the brand’s so-called “Popularization” effort that uses new lithium-iron-phosphate batteries. Per Toyota, the new batteries will offer 20 percent more range than the bZ4X (so, around 300 miles) while also being 40 percent cheaper to produce.

Toyota is also developing its own giga-casting technology much like Tesla uses, which should significantly reduce production costs for EVs.

Tyler Duffy

And Toyota already offers a great, cheap, fuel-efficient alternative to an EV

While Toyota was slow-playing on EVs, it was developing hybrid tech — and the brand’s current batch of hybrids are some of the best on the market. The new Prius, just named North American Car of the Year, offers 57 mpg in city driving starting at just $27,950. You can level up to a plug-in hyrid Prius Prime, now offering 44 miles of EV-only range, for just $32,975.

Related Topics