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On June 6, Toyota officially announced that it would jointly develop a platform for medium and large pure electric passenger cars with Subaru, and will jointly develop a C-class pure electric SUV model to be sold in their respective brands. It is reported that the platform can be widely used in a variety of models, including C-class and D-class cars and SUV, as well as helping to efficiently develop derivative models. In addition, Toyota is seeking partnerships with competitors and technology companies in response to investments in emerging areas such as electric cars and self-driving.

Then, at a press conference in Tokyo on June 7, Toyota announced a large-scale all-electric offensive: from 2020, it will launch a new all-electric platform and six BEV models for the global market, including crossovers and SUV, and Toyota will fully electrify its product line by about 2025. The new plan will start with C-HR BEV and BEV in the Chinese market.

In addition, on June 7, Toyota also announced cooperation with Ningde Times, BYD, Toshiba and other on-board battery manufacturers to accelerate the development of new energy vehicles. Toyota said its sales of new energy vehicles would rise to more than 5.5 million by 2025.

Terashi Maoshu said that on the whole, under the background of the comprehensive "new four modernizations" of the automobile industry, there are business opportunities in the future. In addition, apart from BEV (pure electric), FCEV (hydrogen fuel cell), PHEV (plug-in hybrid) and HEV (hybrid) are still full of value and significance in the future.

In just two days, Toyota announced two major plans for pure electric passenger cars, and the sudden acceleration of pure electric surprised many in the industry. Toyota's target market has always been hybrid or fuel models, and the acceleration of research and development of pure electric vehicles must also be due to increasingly stringent emission requirements in China and Europe.

Terishi Maoshu, vice president of Toyota Motor Company, said that compared with fuel models, pure electric models require higher technical content, more difficult to develop, and more difficult to make profits, not to mention that Toyota has been focusing on hybrid or fuel models. Suddenly speeding up the research and development of pure electric is also quite stressful, but from a comprehensive market point of view, there are many business opportunities in the future.

At a press conference on June 7, Terashi Maoshu admitted that compared with traditional cars, the BEV still has its shortcomings, but the potential of the BEV should not be ignored. The structure of BEV is simpler, and it is easier to apply in the environment of MaaS (seamless travel service). If you want to become a mobile travel company, BEV will be at the core of new modes such as MaaS, autopilot, networking and so on.

Terashi Maoshu believes that compared with fuel vehicles, it is very difficult for electric cars to make a profit. And in the process of development, Toyota increasingly feels that future development can not be achieved by "alone", so finding more partners and business models will be the focus of future work.

In view of this, Toyota has really learned the lesson of fighting alone and continuously strengthened its cooperation with China in hydrogen fuel technology. in April this year, Toyota also set up a joint research institute with Tsinghua University to jointly study the application technology of fuel cells. at the same time, it also cooperated with BAIC Futian and Beijing Yihuatong, and the Futian bus carried Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell technology, which opened the prelude to Toyota's cooperation with domestic manufacturers.

According to the industry, Toyota was not good at cooperating with others in the past. Now that there are partners, Toyota's overall structure is likely to change. Enterprises with the same idea can work together to promote the development of electric vehicles. This may be one of the reasons why most companies choose to cooperate with each other to promote research in the field of electric vehicles. As BMW Group Director Fu Lexi said in an interview with the media, the cooperation between the two companies can not only effectively reduce costs, but also further enhance the technical strength and brand influence of both sides in the new energy vehicle market.

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