The most successful and popular hybrid vehicle ever created is the Toyota Prius which helps this brand stay on the cutting edge.
When you think of hybrid vehicles, the first name that typically comes to mind is the Toyota Prius. Unfortunately, Toyota wasn’t quite as quick to embrace electric vehicles as some others in the market and because of this, the brand has fallen behind in the development of electric vehicles for the market but that is about to change.
A New Division of Toyota
In order to be more engaged in the development of electric vehicles for the future, the Toyota brand is prepared to create a new division that’s going to be called the “Toyota ZEV Factory.” This is a dedicated electric-car research and development division that will begin to work solely on the development of electric vehicles that will be offered by the brand. This division will be made up of 200 engineers that will begin the development, parts procurement, and prepare to mass-produce future electric cars and fuel-cell vehicles for the Toyota brand.
Major Expansion to Catch Up
This new division of Toyota will be a major expansion. The brand is seeing many other automotive brands that are ready to offer several new EV models over the course of the next few years. Previously, Toyota created its EV business plant and this is the next step in making it possible for the brand to have the EV development needed. Toyota wants to be a volume producer of electric cars in 2020 and is rumored to be the brand that will offer solid-state batteries in the EV models it will create by 2022. The use of solid-state batteries seems to be the future of EV driving.
Making Battery Technology Right for Toyota
Toyota made the Prius affordable by altering the technology and lowering the cost of a hybrid vehicle to make sure more people could afford them. Right now, solid-state batteries are much denser than lithium-ion models. This means a solid-state battery can offer you more range in an EV so that you can have the distance you want from a single charge. Right now, these batteries are expensive to produce, but it will be part of the job of the Toyota team to reduce this cost.
What Else We Can Expect from Toyota
Toyota is not just creating this new division to develop EV models for its own brand, it’s working on making strides in EV development with its new partner; Mazda. The two brands became partners in EV development in 2017 and will continue to work together. There is going to be a new dual-brand factory in the US that will open in 2021 and be used to help with the forward movement of the EV technology that we want to have in the future. It’s likely that Toyota won’t take long to catch up with some of the other brands that already have EV models on the market.
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