Now under the leadership of Koji Sato, Toyota is said to be rethinking its electric vehicle strategy and could be planning a new dedicated EV platform as well as significant changes to the way it builds cars.
Individuals with knowledge of what the carmaker is working on assert that under the leadership of Sato, it recognizes that it needs to match the design and manufacturing innovations developed by Tesla. One part of this could be to launch an EV-only architecture.
Toyota started a review of its electric car strategy last year and is keen to reduce production costs and increase margins. While Toyota’s current e-TNGA platform does support EVs, it is also used by combustion and hybrid models, all of which are built together on the same line. It is understood that a number of planned vehicles that were going to use the e-TNGA platform have been delayed or canceled, Reuters reports.
Read: Toyota Says Data Proves EV-Only Policy Is Worse For The Planet
The report states that Toyota’s former chief competitive officer in charge of EV strategy review, Shigeki Terashi, recently gave an internal presentation with Sato where he underlined the importance of a dedicated EV platform and an improved way of managing the heat generated by the battery pack. He also reportedly suggested other innovations “influenced by Tesla’s playbook.”
While Toyota remains the world’s largest car manufacturer having built 10.5 million vehicles in 2022, Tesla made almost eight times the profit per vehicle as the Japanese giant in the third quarter of last year.
Analysts believe that Toyota needs to overhaul its EV strategy or it “will be leaving money on the table,” director of the Clean Transportation for All Campaign at the Sierra Club, Katherine Garcia, said.
Toyota’s limited EV offerings seem to be impacting its U.S. sales. Whereas GM sold more than 20,000 EVs in the first quarter, Toyota and Lexus sold just 1,880 EVs. Toyota also reported an overall sales drop of 9% in the first quarter while sales at GM jumped by a considerable 18%.
