AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)12/03 Report--

Toyota will launch a small and medium-sized electric car in China next year, which will use BYD lithium iron phosphate blade batteries, Reuters quoted people familiar with the matter as saying.

According to related sources, the electric car will appear in the form of a concept car at next year's Beijing auto show, and then it will be launched in the Chinese market as the second model of Toyota's bZ pure electric car series. This car will be slightly larger than the Toyota Corolla. One source said it could be thought of as a "Corolla with more space in the back row" and could sell for less than 200000 yuan. Netizens were not too surprised by the news of using BYD batteries to speed up the launch of the product, but thought it was a pragmatic performance of Toyota.

Toyota's products in pure electricity are very limited, making it very different from other automakers. Even GM has electrified the Hummer, which has been out of production for years, while Toyota has only introduced the CH-R EV and another small electric car. In April today, Toyota officially announced the launch of bZ4x,bZ, the first model of the bZ series, which is abbreviated as beyond Zero, which is all pure electric vehicles and is scheduled to go on sale in 2022. BZ4x, based on e-TNGA architecture, has a wheelbase of more than 2.8 meters and has two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive power forms, of which the pure electric mileage of the front-drive version can reach 402km.

In terms of promoting the development of electric vehicles, Toyota is cautious about pure electric technology and is more keen to promote the development of hybrid power. A number of Toyota executives have even criticized pure electric cars on several public occasions. At the annual meeting of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association in December 2020, Toyota President Akio Toyoda publicly said that pure electric cars were over-hyped and that the Japanese government did not take into account its real carbon dioxide emissions and the impact of power shortages. Electric cars will kill companies, require huge investment and emit more carbon dioxide.

Akio Toyoda said that in countries like Japan, where most of the electricity comes from coal and natural gas, the promotion of electric vehicles is bad for the environment. "the more electric cars we produce, the more carbon dioxide we emit."

Akio Toyoda also explained that in Japan, if all cars were to be driven by electric power, there could be power shortages in the summer. At the same time, we have to face the continuous investment of about 14 trillion yuan to 37 trillion yen in the infrastructure for the full transformation of electric vehicles.

He believes that if the government forces a ban on fuel models, has it ever considered that the business model of the Japanese auto industry will collapse and even cause millions of people to lose their jobs?

The founder of domestic electric car maker Xiaopeng commented on the view. He Xiaopeng said on Weibo, "I can't help but think of the following story-on April 25, 2014, Microsoft announced the formal completion of its acquisition of Nokia. When Nokia's current CEO Yomaolila announced at a press conference that he agreed to Microsoft's acquisition, he finally said,'We didn't do anything wrong, but I don't know why we lose.' With that, dozens of Nokia executives, including him, could not help crying. " The view that he Xiaopeng wants to express is self-evident.

In terms of performance, Akio Toyoda is resisting this historic trend of change. However, this is not the case. On the other side, Toyota is making a substantial attempt with a number of battery technology companies. Toyota has successively set up electric vehicle technology-related joint ventures with Panasonic and China's BYD.

On March 25, 2020, BYD and Toyota each contributed half of the money. BYD Toyota Electric vehicle Technology Co., Ltd. was officially established with a registered capital of 345 million yuan, headquartered in Pingshan District, Shenzhen. Toyota sent more than 20 employees to work with BYD technicians.

At the time of the launch of bZ4x, it was reported that this model uses BYD blade battery, BYD is the world's largest lithium iron phosphate battery manufacturer, it officially launched lithium iron phosphate blade battery in 2020, with significant cost and space advantages.

If the bZ electric car sold in the Chinese market, with the help of BYD's batteries and some existing experience, it will bring Toyota a lot of benefits in the product space and launch time. The BYD blade battery overcomes this deficiency to some extent, successfully increasing the specific energy density by 50% by changing the shape and arrangement of the battery. Compared with ordinary ternary lithium batteries, the cost of blade batteries has been reduced by 20% MUR 30%, which is of course something that Toyota and other car companies care more about, and more importantly, BYD has actually verified all the related technologies in its own products, which reduces Toyota's R & D risk a lot.

At that time, Wu Pei, a well-known car blogger, posted a screenshot of his chat with fans, which mentioned that BYD was providing Toyota with the design, development and production of electric cars. In other words, the brand's future pure electric new cars from the underlying technology, electronic control systems, motors and batteries and other core technology, will be fully responsible for and independently completed by BYD, the latter will only "change the standard." The content said that at that time, the model had basically completed the first stage and carried out road tests.

All the manufacturers involved did not respond to the relevant news, and at this time foreign media reported that Toyota was using BYD blade batteries, which seemed to be just a statement of what had happened.

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