Toyota Wants to Follow in VW Group's Footsteps and Build its Own MQB Modular Platform

Nowadays, the automotive industry is driven mainly by profits and the pursuit of higher sales figures. The character a car and its individuality are placed on the side, in an effort to have more of them to sell and cover as many niches as possible.

Volkswagen is doing it and doing it well, so is Ford and now even Peugeot is taking steps to cut costs considerably with their new EMP2 platform. They do it by sharing as many bits as they can in and among their cars, to minimize development and manufacturing costs. Toyota is the next manufacturer to adopt this theme.

The Japanese manufacturer, spurred by the success of the VW MQB platform, which underpins a wide range of vehicles, wants to follow suite. Their framework, called Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) features a customizable platform that can be used in a variety of models.

At first, the vehicles will only share 20 to 30 percent of parts, but in due time, Toyota is looking to push that closer to 70 to 80 percent. This way, the cost savings will be huge, and the ride and handling of the models will be consistent throughout the range, which is both good and bad, depending on your viewpoint on the matter.

Such a tactic is very well-suited for the kinds of cars Toyota makes, which are competent, durable and highly-practical, but aside from a handful of models, lack character and individuality.

However, Toyota officials argue that they can reduce overall development costs by 20 to 30 percent, and the excess cash can be invested to make the individual cars better, but chances are they’ll just pocket the difference…

By Andrei Nedelea

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