Cars that are designed from the ground up to be EVs tend to be much better than trying to shoehorn an EV into an ICE design.
The new Lexus ES350e, which comes in both hybrid and EV flavors, has been pretty universally panned as a mediocre EV [1]. Lexus anticipates that the vast majority of ES sales will be for the hybrid model, and I expect the same will be true of the Corolla.
The updated bZ and new bZ Woodland on the other hand, which are built as ground-up EVs on the e-TNGA platform, actually seem pretty decent. And I'm hopeful for the upcoming EV Highlander, too (although that will use a modified version of the TNGA-K platform).
I would prefer if Toyota just released a new EV model with roughly the same proportions as the Corolla, instead of going with the one-size-fits-all approach. But maybe they'll finally be able to get it right this time.
Everyone thought Toyota was Nokia when Tesla appeared... I think those days are over. Toyota survived that one already with a facelift for Prius.
BYD Dolphin base in Japan is $19k, the new Racco kei car is $14k. They're not doing so well - they just have no selling point. They're not even the cheapest of EVs in Japan, let alone the cheapest of all cars for Japan - $19k is literally 4k over the current gen JDM Corolla. I think that is an indication that BYD has no secret sauce but their pricing are just introductory one to starve off last bits of Western industrial capacities spared by Japanese automakers.
Quality matters though. A 10 years warranty as long as you do the prescribed maintenance with hassle free ownership is a major reason why Toyota’s clientele sticks.
It’s not impossible to unseat them. But it’s also far from given.
Tech people seem to really be confused about the concepts of revenue and net income; must be the whole VC we lose money on every item, but make it up on volume thing.
Toyota still sells 10M cars a year and has an enormous manufacturing, supplier and dealer network. That doesn’t disappear overnight because BYD can sell a $14k EV in one market
Uhhhh excuse me? I just bought a new Toyota Camry Hybrid because its range is 650 miles on a single gas tank. I can drive from Bay Area to LA, drive around LA for 5 days and then drive back home on 1.5 tanks of gas. I love it, and I don't have to spend hours charging. My other car is a Tesla, which I also love but I will never use it for road trips. My friend drove from Chicago to SF and had to charge 15+ times.
> Cars that are designed from the ground up to be EVs tend to be much better
Better here means more efficient, cheaper to assemble, more spacious on the inside, etc. Having to repurpose space left when you remove the combustion engine + fuel systems and other supporting infrastructure to host an electric drive train plus battery typically means compromising on these things. It works but it won't be as good as it could be.
And of course in a market full of competitively priced EVs from vendors that designed them from the ground up to be pure EVs that means fighting with your hands tied behind your back.
This thing will probably still do alright for Toyota. But they'll have to discount it to compensate for it just not being all that great compared to its more optimized competition.
Toyota is very good at selling things at a bargain though. They are actually holding up pretty well compared to other legacy manufacturers (they even managed a bit of growth last year in units sold). But it's in a market that except for EVs isn't growing much where the Chinese manufacturers are expanding their market share globally at the cost of pretty much everyone else. Toyota is kicking the can a bit down the road here. Probably to buy some time to build something better in a few years. But they might be milking this platform for quite some time.
Toyota have more or less explicitly stated the thing which I think all the "legacy" manufacturers are struggling with: moving to EVs obliterates the engine division, which is both part of their competitive advantage and would make a lot of people redundant. A more middle class version of the transition away from coal mining making a lot of dead mining towns. And similarly, it has to happen in order to keep global warming below 2C.
>Corolla is expected to come in several powertrains, including gas, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric.
And also it’s just going to be confusing for the customers. Which one to get? Which one is better? It’s hard to imagine how same platform can have efficient structural layout for the large battery and for the ICE engine.
EV is much about software as well, and Toyota is not going to shine in this area either…
Arguably hybrids rely on software much more than EVs do since it has to all the motor/battery management EVs do, but also coordination with the engine and transmission which EVs do not have, and Toyota has been the leader in that area for almost 3 decades now.
Unless you mean software as in fart apps on the touch screen, then yeah, Toyota lags in that department.
I don't think "which one to get" has been a problem for choosing cars -- much easier than choosing between i3/i5/i7 (or whatever they are called these days), and most consumers understand what they mean and the tradeoffs. It basically comes down to these questions -- do you want to pay more on the car to save on gas in the long run (hybrid)? Do you want to be able to plugin and charge your vehicle similar to an EV (PHEV)? Do you want to get rid of gas completely (EV)? And I'm sure salespeople will happily walk this over for a buyer.
> efficient structural layout
They don't need to be the most efficient on the market. Efficiency varies a lot among cars, and people don't make purchase decisions solely based on that (if at all).
IMO a prospective car buyer likely has a preference towards a certain drivetrain already.
An age old choice betwen petrol and diesel never seemed to be a problem, and electric vs hybrid/ICE are way more different to each other.
And as for the car software- after driving a new Prius I don't see any areas where Tesla's or BYD software is significantly ahead unless we are talking navigation which is shit either way, and I'd rather prefer car play
Not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Modular_Platform . It seems like every surviving manufacturer has one of these, especially when the company like Stellantis is a cut-and-shut of struggling brands.
The upside of using a platform for EV and hybrid engines is that it typically looks a lot better aesthetically than an EV only platform.
Just look at the Mercedes S class versus the EQS. The EQS was ground up designed as an EV and because of the design decisions made in that process is the ugliest Mercedes designed ever.
Same with the Audi A6 which was always a masterclass in design and now is a generic blob of a car with the new EV only model.
I assume the same is true for the new C-HR+, right? It shares the name with the hybrid C-HR, but as far as I understand that's just marketing and it's actually based on the bZ platform.
Our 2004 RAV4 is dying and I'm seriously considering the C-HR+, not because of brand loyalty but because it seems to be one of the best EVs I can find on the market. 600+ km range and 224 HO for around 35k€, plus actual physical knobs in the car and mechanical door handles seems like a great deal to me.
> I would prefer if Toyota just released a new EV model with roughly the same proportions as the Corolla
I think the issue is time and money. Toyota maybe doesn't want to spend the money on a completely different car in the compact sedan category just for EVs - at least not yet. Plus, it might mean waiting several years when they want something out now. Sometimes it's about tradeoffs like time and money. Adapting an ICE Corolla might be reasonably cheap and fast. They might feel the need to have an EV Corolla out sooner than later. They might want to take their time with a new platform EV so that they don't put out something that doesn't meet their quality standards. While the drivetrain might be different, everything else in the Corolla is battle tested.
Further, Japan is especially hard hit by the Strait closing. Toyota may have thought they had years before they had to go fully EV, but the world has forced their hands. They need to be offering options today.
I agree that it's much better to design an EV to be an EV from the ground up. The reality is, however, that consumers don't want EVs for a myriad of reasons and prefer hybrids. And developing two completely different platforms is too expensive even for a higly profitable company like Toyota.
Might be true in some countries but EVs are rapidly becoming the highest sellers in many others. My experience is that once people experience an EV for the first time they prefer it over a hybrid/ICE car, unless there's a practical reason for needing hybrid range (which most people will argue but don't need day to day).
> The reality is, however, that consumers don't want EVs for a myriad of reasons and prefer hybrids.
I think this is completely true for the period 2010 - 2030.
But from 2030 onwards, it seems 4 things are structurally different in many markets:
1. energy per kilometer, improved about 30% (from about 5 km per kWh to about 6.5)
2. kwh of useable battery, increased by about 80%
3. chargers per person, increased by about 20x
4. Charge speed increased by 5x from about 50 kW to 250 kW
All these figures are approximate averages for normal EVs, the very low / very high end are different.
So we have more battery, which we use less of to drive, which we can charge faster, and at way more places.
The reality is that an average European for example drives about 30km per day. Take the base model Tesla 3, it has 575 km of range and can charge 285 km in 15 minutes. The base model. So for the average driver that's a ~15 minute charge, every 10 days. For the average person an EV makes more and more sense.
That's today, for a base model car, which is suffering from cheap and quality competition out of China that will be even better.
Cars that will be released in 3 years from now (>2030) are even more favorable. I honestly think the 'myriad of reasons to prefer a hybrid' is soon going to be an exception, not the rule, for newly purchased cars (of course the 2nd hand market is a different, delayed story). And compromising your car design won't let you compete with manufacturers that don't compromise and go fully EV.
If you consider the squeeze that regulators worldwide are going to be putting on gas the next decades, I think going full-EV on new models makes sense. Sure you can keep selling some ICE cars but developing entirely new ICE models, and mixing an EV into them?
Consumers don't want an expensive EV. Now that EVs are becoming cheaper than ICE vehicles, they will take over the market because they are the better product.
What consumers want varies a lot by country and region. It becomes apparent if you look at a map, e.g. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/european-alternative-fuels-ob... , that there's a sort of ""geographic contagion"" as adoption spreads out from Norway.
Part of this is charger infrastructure. But I think part of it is also social proof: once someone you know has an EV, or you start seeing them parked around you, it looks like a more realistic option. People don't like the unknown.
Differential cost also matters. This doesn't have to be subsidies, but most countries are afraid to tax new ICE vehicles to the extent that Scandinavian countries do.
Current Toyota engines - several years in production already - used in hybrids have 40% thermodynamic efficiency, new Chinese engines (Geely and BYD) - 45% and soon coming out Toyota engine is claimed to hit 50%. With the numbers like this the hybrids ( and plugins, given the falling prices and increasing charge/weight density of the batteries) seem to still have a long and profitable path forward.
Granted it may result in Toyota losing the battle in the long run. On the other hand any large improve in batteries may gradually bring Toyota into EV world just by letting to upsize the plugins' batteries.
Personally i like very much my 2015 Prius Plugin, and the only thing i'd want about it is to have additional 20KWh of batteries (may be one day i'll throw them in myself :)
I think if OEMs prioritized phevs more as a gateway drug, the transition to EVs would have been a lot less painful in NA. Even just driving a PHEV with 50km electric range makes you appreciate how great an EV can be.
Sadly, there's few good PHEV options. And even Toyota underserves this market.
It's not consumers decision, it's a dealers mafia. If everyone on EV, you will not change oil and other gasoline attributes repairs. If you have hybrid, it's a cherry on the top, best of both worlds, pay for regular issues of gas and electric car combined :)
I personally never wanted "an EV", I just wanted a car that happened to have an electric drivetrain. So Stellantis's choice to present models with a choice of drivetrains suited me perfectly. I'm neither ashamed nor proud to drive electric, it's just a choice I made and it doesn't need to be part of my identity.
Unfortunately, companies still try to make EVs -- even when designed from the ground up to be electric-only -- pretend to be ICE, for example with forward creep. I really wish I could turn that off. (For some reason, "one-pedal driving" is some super integrated all-in-one feature that has grown to include the lack of forward creep, so the ability to turn off the forward creep apparently gets consumed by unwillingness to implement the entirety of one-pedal driving. Which unfortunately affects my vehicle)
Something very strange, at least for me, is that Toyota seems to be pushing the electric and hybrid motors very hard.
For example, here in Greece you can only find a Hybrid Yaris and Yaris cross. No diesel, no petrol. I know a lot of people that don't care about the premium they need to pay for th Hybrid and would prefer a normal petrol (or even diesel) car with manual transmission. Toyota seems to not care about these customers.
Why don't they put there great diesel or petrol motors to Yaris and get a lot of money and prefer to only push for Hybrid ?
Hybrid almost certainly has a substantially lower total cost of ownership due to lower fuel costs and reduced brake wear. I think fuel efficiency standards ought to essentially mandate them.
The new Chevy Bolt EV is also a "normal car but electric" to me. It's not a car, but it's not a huge SUV either. It has physical controls, you can disable the modem by pulling the OnStar fuse, and it has a decent range and decent fast charging.
Note that this is a concept, I've never seen an actual production model look anything like the concept.
My father has a hybrid model, 2023 MY I think. It has physical controls for the radio, for AC and related things, for the heated seats, for the various "driver assist" features (like auto high beams, a parking thing (no idea what that is), radar, lane assist). It has a touchscreen, but that only seems to handle the maps, fancy radio controls (think equalizer and such), and other "car settings", whatever those are. You can absolutely drive it without ever having to interact with the touchscreen while doing normal things. I hate touchscreen controls as much as the next HN poster, but I have strictly 0 beef with the Corolla on this front. Door handles and windows work exactly the same as on my 2005 "dumb" car. Hell, I think it even has a physical toggle for the "automatic night mode" on the rear-view mirror, while mine couldn't be "non automatic".
To GP's point, I don't think it ever was an "entry level" car, just a "normal compact" car. I don't see why adding an electric drivetrain would have someone expect it would somehow become a basic, "entry-level" car.
I don't say we don't need those, but the Corolla never seems to have targeted that market, at least here in Europe. There always were plenty similar-sized cheaper and more basic cars from domestic manufacturers. Is it different in the US?
Kia Niro is where the Koreans have invested their stuipd; a stateful panel in which volume and temperature knobs are multiplexed, and and so are tactile-free touch places on the panel between them. And it won't stay in the same mode; it changes it behind your back. You think the knob is volume because you last tweaked it a minute ago, but nope, you are messing with the temperature now.
Had found this in the 2nd generation Nissan Leaf. It would have been perfect but for the slow and non-standard charger.
Looking forward to the Volkswagen ID Polo hitting the used market in a couple of years. Physical buttons, decent range and charge times, and it’s rated to pull reasonable loads.
I think there's a surprisingly large market for an EV that's basically "a Corolla, but electric" rather than another attempt to make the interior look like a concept car from 2035
It's not even "concept car from 2035", it's "concept car from 2015 trying to look like a car from a sci-fi story set in 2035"
And I agree. People like normal cars, people like normal door handles, people like A/C and heater knobs, people like PRNDL levers. None of that has changed just because the drivetrain uses a different kind of engine. Why is it so hard to make that, but electric? Why does "electric motor" somehow mean "all controls must be on the iPad"?
I hope it's just a phase that's about to reverse. Maybe they felt the need to go all futuristic design to cash in on how electric drivetrains used to feel futuristic. Maybe, as electric drivetrains just become "normal, boring" technology, we get options with normal designs too.
The article does say that the electric Corolla is to be priced at $30k, about $3,000 more than the hybrid and $5,000 more than the gas-powered one. That may not be objectively 'low cost', but it's comparable in cost to the lowest-cost new EVs, and probably similar total cost of ownership to the hybrid/gas cars when considering cheaper fuelling.
Maybe they could shave $3-5000 off the cost by not giving it a "high-tech interior", going completely against the design philosophy of the car in the first place.
Omitting the cellular modem would be a nice way to save a few bucks, and would save me the effort of pulling the fuse or disassembling the dash in order to silence Internet traffic to and from the car. But how will Toyota sell my driving habits to car insurance companies then?
I'm not in the US, but here in Europe Toyota's hold their value really well (too well I'd say). Is that reflected in the US financing rates, so you can get it for really low payments?
Depends on where you live. In states like Connecticut, or certain areas of California (PG&E Bay Area customers), the ROI is very long or simply doesn't pencil out at all. I think for Connecticut, which has high electricity prices but low gas prices, it's just net negative. For me in SF, despite high gas prices the ROI is just too long (5-10 years?), and that's before factoring in the ~$5000+ required for updating my electrical box, which is a conservative estimate because now the city requires the meter to be outside the house, whereas it's currently in the garage.
"BTW: The price premium for electric is offset by the lower cost of electricity…"
How about depreciation though?
My sense is that after so many years (5?, 8?) an EV is going to be desperate for a new battery. That's, what, $5K (10K?) or more? It's like if an ICE car needed a new engine after 65K miles.
I assume the resell value for an 8-year old electric needing a new battery is close to zilch.
I want an EV, but they have to come way down in price.
It's not just that. EV charging and solar resources have improved while fossil fuels have become more expensive. The maths is very regional. Some countries are better at producing electricity or oil than others.
Looks like most of the images are concepts. I wonder if the looks will change before launch? And they do say the cost is only a few k above the gas models. Something to wait and see, I guess.
There is also a chance I won't buy a car without knobs. Car software has been historically so bad. My latest doesn't have a volume knob so my front passengers can't turn the volume at all (the UX is sliding the screen from the side to get navigation bars to appear which contain a volume button that you have to drag laterally - no increase/decrease software buttons).
Otherwise it's a great car and that is literally the one drawback.
I must be the minority surely, but given the choice between knobs and screen, knobs are the deciding factor. Even if it's more expensive, it's UX that you use permanently while operating heavy machinery!
Id argue by an order of magnitude. Knobs require cables, connectors and assembly; they also require dedicated robots and/or a human to test them in the assembly line.
To be honest in my opinion car design got so boring in general since about 20 years ago that it's nice to see it mixed up with these hyper futuristic concept designs.
It makes the future feel fun, and feels like a return to adventurous aesthetics for the pure sake of it. At the very least, it's noticably different and interesting. I hope architecture follows suit.
I don't mind analogue buttons or anything and I think screens can kind of suck especially with Android and auto manufacturer abandonware, but with the Tesla I now own I'm always wondering what people are using all these buttons for - thinking back to my previous Hondas. In the Tesla I've got climate control, heated seats, and music/navigation. Some of the other features like adjusting mirrors I can use the multi-purpose buttons for in the correct context. On any given drive I hop in, put my phone on the charger and don't use it, and then just drive.
What am I missing? Or is it just that folks want buttons? Is it the design?
The exterior design language is the same as their current newer models like the C-HR or even the GR GT. The interior is like any other concept car. I don't like it either, but it looks like a normal Toyota.
Please. I am begging EV manufacturers to just make a normal car. The body looks fine but why does every EV have to have the absolute worst cabin ever designed?
Look into the Nissan Leaf, one of the early EV models. I don't know what the 2026 is like but my 2021 has 220-ish miles of range and is... an electric car.
It's a car. That's electric.
Physical buttons. Normal doors. Normal design. Normal handles. Normal controls. Drives great and accelerates better than an economy gas car.
As a bonus, that means almost the entire car is standard. Other than the electric drive train, a regular mechanic can work on everything else: tires, wheels, brakes, suspension, etc.
It's given us basically zero problems. Maintenance so far is a few minor recall items (free fixes) and a tire rotation. We bought it new during COVID.
Only downside to the 2021 model was the CHaDemO (or however you caps it) plug, which is obsolescent. I think recent models have CCS. There is a converter dongle and if I fast charged often I'd pick one up. Apparently they work but they're a little pricey since unfortunately it's not just a simple plug converter. It's a different signaling and locking system, so it has to be a smart dongle.
The 2026 Leaf made some big improvements. Liquid cooled battery, faster charging, longer range.
It has the usual modern car cost cutting where steering wheel inputs are plastic panels with mysterious capacitive regions and no feedback so you can't feel if you've successfully pressed anything, whether you pressed the right thing, or if your fingertips are too dry and don't register. Most of the center console inputs are replaced with a screen with another row of cheap capacitive touch icons below it.
Charging is behind the times again with an awkward 2-port arrangement, but it's different from the previous gen's J1772 L1/L2 and CHAdeMO for L3 up to 50 kW.
For 2026 they replaced the CHAdeMO port with NACS, supporting a maximum of 150 kW L3 charging, but it still uses a separate J1772 port for L1/L2 unlike every other car where the NACS port does both.
All things considered it's a solid entry level EV.
There used to be huge FUD campaigns against Leafs, and against not many others. Perhaps because Leaf at face value could have rendered entry trim Model S and Model 3 pointless.
If it makes you feel better, this is a concept. They probably won't produce the vehicle they showed, especially since customers are making it known that they want regular buttons/door handles/HVAC vents/etc.
I picked up a '25 Subaru Solterra (rebadged Toyota bz4X) for a decent lease deal and while I'm surprised how little I think about the EV parts the "car parts" are dreadful.
I really need to do a write-up on the dichotomy of EV things being good (charger works, no real battery QC issues, it's a RAV4-but-EV) while all of the shared ICE parts (anything in the software stack) are riddled with bugs or head-scratching defaults.
Overall, a fine car for me, but (as much as I do not like El*n) Telsa is so significantly beyond their offerings it's hard to overstate.
EDIT:
I forgot to add but I think the cost savings for EVs can be a wash, make sure you check the following:
1.) can't charge at home / live in an apartment.
1a.) If you do install a L2 charger at home, you will significantly reduce your cost savings.
2.) you rely on fast-chargers in any significant capacity.
3.) Double check the math on any lease, loan, etc. on new EVs vs. a beater gas car. Especially if you pay an EV tax in your state or country. (Post-COVID the $2K beater car seems to have gone extinct here...)
in contrast, i bought a 2026 Subaru Uncharted, which is a clean sheet EV design, collaboration on powertrain components between Subaru and Toyota, and it's awesome. My BMW i4 xdrive 40 handled worse, had software bugs, cost about 50% more, and had a cheaper interior with truly stupid engineering choices, but you could choose from more colors. I had a clean sheet ev design i3 for about 8 years before that and it was cool.
I wonder, from your comments, and my cars, if the trick is ev-only designs, as the Solterra has various altered versions, as did the i4, whereas my i3 and Uncharted were designed only to be EVs.
edit: charging L2 at home is great, to your point.
I hadn't heard of the uncharted, sounds like it's closer to a C-HR electric than anything else? not that there's anything wrong with that. I love subes and drive an old one but they have a certain vibe that I wonder if the Toyota collab takes away.
all kind of academic since I'm planning on getting a slate but it's nice to know Subaru is bouncing back from that Solterra disaster.
I got a used EV about 3 years ago and I don't think I saved money. The car lost 10,000 CAD in value. I have to pay the dealer for repairs and maintenance, which is really expensive. I only drive about 15,000 km per year, so even though I mainly charge at home, I don't think the money saved on gas is more than the money lost in other ways. I'm actually in the process of changing to a 2010 Toyota Yaris. Cheap DIY maintenance, good fuel economy, cheap insurance, super reliable etc etc. And I like the idea of having actual buttons and no screens, a manual shifter, and even a car that goes vroom.
We looked at the Solterra in 2025 and it was genuinely awful, I can't believe anyone who works at a car company looked at it and thought "this is substantially better and will sell more than the Pontiac Aztek despite aesthetically and practically being worse in many regards". The interior center console feels like a prank, almost.
I never will (also because of Elon), but this comment makes me curious to experience a Tesla. Are they really so much better? I've heard endless bad things about their build quality.
After returning a '25 Mercedes EQB (employee lease), I bought a used '23 Solterra, and it seems like a better than linear downgrade (that is, the overall experience is a bit worse, but the price is lower by more than how much worse it is). The software and interface are all completely fine, and stay out of the way of driving and Android Auto. And I'm rather glad for the lack of some of the bells and whistles, because the dashboard screen on the MB had too much going on.
I own very first model Y, but wouldn’t buy the facelift. Changing gears swiping touchscreen is too much despite many real improvements. Build quality is definitely not premium, but it was single electrical vehicle I was able to afford and use as a substitute for petrol car. Many others at the time were good only as 2nd or 3rd car in the household.
I've been in my friends Model 3 many times and it's full of "oh why didn't anyone think of this before" and EV-centric choices. There's stupid stuff too (no turning stalks or shifter) but even ignoring the software choices it's really that much better of a car.
> The software and interface are all completely fine
Perhaps whatever platform mine, my friends corolla and friends taco are on is just busted but I wish it had even 70% reliability of just working when I'm using anything software related.
The build quality has improved significantly, though I would not put them on the level of a Toyota or anything. Maybe Ford.
The software is mostly quite a lot better, the quality of the infotainment exceeds almost anything else you can buy. The remote control ability is also exceptional. But they have glaring omissions like a refusal to support CarPlay. Or a persistent need to prove that vision can replace a bog standard IR rain sensor (it still cannot).
They do get some things right that for whatever reason seem difficult to get from other makers (like a simple climate hold when you park, or dog mode). And love it or hate it, FSD is light years ahead of anything else you can buy as a consumer. I won't pay for it, because I like to drive, but it now exceeds any expectation I ever had for it. I would wager that if I put grandma's house in the nav system and told the car to drive all the way there (about 175 miles distant), it would most probably take me all the way from my garage to grandma's driveway (and park) without me doing anything other than putting it in drive and hitting start.
I loathe Elon and this was a pretty big consideration, but I do not make purchases based on single factors, and overall the value proposition was impossible to ignore. Partly this is because there is basically zero competition for an M3P.
I got a Model 3 in 2020 and I still don't see anything competitive from other manufacturers. There are so many little things that it does right. You pair your phone with the car, so when you walk up to it and pull on the door handle, it opens. If you're not next to the car and someone else tries to open the door, it's locked. Each driver has their own profile which saves things like UI preferences, acceleration settings, seat position, side mirror angles, climate control, etc. So if my wife was the last person to drive the car and I open the driver's side door, the seat moves to my position. The mirrors adjust to my settings, and so on.
Even though my car has the older hardware, the self-driving is far beyond anything else I've used. It makes road trips far less tiring. I basically sit in the driver's seat while it drives from charging station to charging station. I've gone hundreds of miles without touching the steering wheel. Usually I intervene because I want to park in a specific spot, as the car tends to choose spots that are less convenient. Also it likes to park in my neighbor's driveway instead of mine. (The driveways are about 5 feet apart.)
The phone app lets you control all kinds of stuff remotely. I like to turn on the climate control before going to the car, that way my kid's car seat won't be uncomfortably warm on a sunny day. You can view the cameras from your phone, lock/unlock the car, open/close the windows, and open the trunk & frunk. And it works anywhere there's cell network connectivity, not just within direct radio range of the car.
I'd love it if more cars had these sorts of features, but I don't see it happening any time soon. Tesla seems to be a software company that happens to make cars, while everyone else is a car company that happens to make some software.
I've had not a single "quality issue" with my Model 3 other than the cabin air filter. The car interior stinks worse than any other car I've owned, if it isn't replaced on time! I too have heard a ton of bad things on Reddit. Then I went on the subreddits where people actually owned them. Those folks really seemed to like their cars. I can't say I LOVE the car... removing turn signals, wiper controls and ability to physically shift into reverse seem like brain-dead moves. Otherwise though? It's a lovely care to drive.
Does Eyesight beep at you frequently? My 2020 Outback beeps every time it can't see the lanes, which is about once a mile where I live. I'll probably never by another Subaru because of that issue alone.
Fossil cars are cooked and even Toyota is implicitly agreeing.
BYD makes cars that can charge in about 10 minutes and honestly deliver 500km+ of range. Every advantage that combustion based cars used to have has dissipated by now.
Looking at my Nissan Leaf it is entirely possible to build a reliable car with real buttons and knobs everywhere, and thats the problem for the industry. The used market is flooded with perfectly good Leafs, dirt cheap, the lowest yearly maintenance vehicle on CarEdge.
Even ICE cars have gotten a little too good over the last couple of decades, I see plenty of early 2000s models driving around today looking perfectly fine.
How are these corporations supposed to maximise profit if they keep churning out perfectly sensible vehicles?
Yeah, a lot of people on Hacker News are asking for a bare-bones EV, but that market isn't big enough for US or Western carmakers to justify building one. Still, I'd bet that over the next few years, as batteries keep getting cheaper, we'll see plenty of these bare-bones cars in Africa and Asia. They're already building electric tuk-tuks, and as solar power electrifies more of the world, we'll get bare-bones EVs.
Toyota's EVs share most of the same components as their non-EVs, like door handles and screens. They have become the fourth best selling EVs behind the Teslas and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 in recent months.
I drive an EV. It sucks. Sucks. Sucks. Worst driving experience of all cars I've owned. The lack of buttons and crappy HVAC controls are things I notice daily.
Outside of Tesla owners, I don't know a single EV owner who praises these elements. The EV market does not want this.
I literally want a 1995 Toyota Starlet, with its spartan interior, just with an electric drivetrain and a price tag that reflects. A standard 2 din screen with android auto is enough tech for me.
You could attempt a conversion yourself. People take this up as a hobby (e.g. https://www.diyelectriccar.com/ ) ; presumably to be able to pull up next to a muscle car at the traffic light in their antique 2CV and then out-accelerate them when the light turns green.
and all it took was two decades and millions of spend in anti-EV lobbying before they finally gave in, huh
(also kind of wild to me that an EV focused blog wouldn't mention this a single time since Toyota is (was?) arguably one of the staunchest and most stubborn anti-EV manufacturers out there)
Toyota was broadly right in their approach to EVs. They were pioneers in hybrids. They had excellent hybrid cars like Prius that have been around forever. Their low end cars are extremely fuel efficient too that making them hybrid does not really offer marginal benefits.
Now most companies have written off their crazy investments in EVs. Honda has discontinued Prologue and so on.
at first, sure, but they've since donated large amounts of money to climate-change deniers who fight hard against electrification and emission standards
They have also been slowly, but surely, moving all their vehicles to HEV/PHEVs (at least in Canada). For example, you can only buy a new Camry, Sienna or Rav-4 (most popular SUV in the world) in hybrid/PHEV form.
I am with Toyota on this one. They have done more to reduce carbon emissions than any other automaker. Hybrids, particularly plug-in hybrids, achieve most of the benefits of EVs without any of the tradeoffs, and they make far more efficient use of our limited supply of batteries.
Public policy should not insist on one technology to the exclusion of viable alternatives.
> Over the last three electoral cycles, Toyota has become the top auto industry financier of climate deniers[4]. It has helped to finance campaigns of 207 climate-denying congressional candidates, more than twice as many as Ford and nearly 50% more than General Motors, the only other automakers with federal political action committees (PACs)
> [Toyota] is bankrolling an army of climate denying lawmakers and lobbying aggressively against emissions and fuel economy standards
They were AMAZINGLY anti-EV a few years ago. They couldn't shut the heck up about hydrogen being endgame and even shipped a flagship car that used the technology to prove it. (It barely sold, you couldn't refuel it outside of the Bay Area and the entire program was eventually written off.)
> [...] since Toyota is (was?) arguably one of the staunchest and most stubborn anti-EV manufacturers out there
Wait till you hear about German car manufacturers. It's not even that long ago that e.g. Mercedes said that their target audience doesn't want EVs and they will never (!) give in to that market. Now look at them. All of them.
it's sunk cost on their hydrogen cell R&D - they want there to still be room for that instead of going with electrification but they have to diversify their portfolio to keep up with markets
> "Toyota in particular has been vocal that they are uninterested in making ZEVs available in California. [...] Toyota has invested in hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles [instead]."
The only reason I don't drive an EV is that I live in an apartment building that won't install chargers. Given this limitation, I drive a Corolla hybrid and it's great - it drives smoothly like an EV, and mileage is good (although war in the middle east isn't great for prices). If it was practical for me to have an EV, I would probably stay clear from Toyota. Even though they have a great reputation for reliability of their hybrids, they spent decades bad-mouthing EV and the bz4 is markedly less reliable than their hybrids. Hyundai Ioniq 6 is looking good I guess.
I had to sell my EV and go back to ICE for the same reason: my new apartment didn't have EV charging, and non-Tesla DC fast-chargers in my area (Seattle/Tacoma) were unreliable as someone would come along every few weeks and cut off the charging cables for the copper, and it would then take more weeks for them to be repaired. The infrastructure was simply too unstable, but it did only cost me $300 in electricity for the entire year previously that I owned it.
I live in an apartment as well and my area has really good transportation. We don't commute to work with the car. There are various reasons why we did car-sharing nonetheless.
In the end our family decided to buy a car. We got an EV. Our use is sporadic and one could argue that if money was our priority, buying the car was a mistake.
So in this situation, having an EV is fine. The only downside that I found is that I spend a bit too much money on McDonald's. This is because the cheapest chargers are next McDonald's where I live. But it's not a problem, just a funny hiccup.
I disagree. Toyota is one of the only companies that didn't plunge into EVs and get completely destroyed. Instead, they've stayed on the hybrid train, which has turned out to be a highlight for ICE cars.
I was surprised to read the headline because this is going in a different direction than most car companies. For example, VW, Ford, GM, and others have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago. They discovered that most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them, and the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
Then I read the key quote and realized that Toyota isn't transforming the Corolla into an electric vehicle. They're simply going to offer an electric option. That's much less of an interesting headline, which explains why it wasn't chosen.
> “Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source―let’s make good-looking cars that everyone will want to drive!” Toyota’s CEO said at the Japan Mobility Show.
> For example, VW, Ford, GM, and others have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago. They discovered that most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them, and the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
I don't think that's a fair assessment of the EV market, which continues to grow, albeit slowly, in the US and much faster elsewhere. At best it is constrained to the US car market where the government has been yanking incentives, tariffs, and emissions requirements back and forth recently, providing an unstable market for manufacturers to invest in.
Some brands put together EV models that were inherently unprofitable, and hoped that incentives and scale would save them, mainly Ford. Ford is currently investing a lot into building their next-gen EV platforms which should be both more affordable and profitable. GM has not cancelled any EV models that I'm aware of, except the Bolt which is planned to be replaced by a new affordable EV model in a similar market slot.
VW is introducing a lot of new EV models in Europe and other markets, but not so much in the US where policy has us a less favorable market for them.
Toyota + Subaru have introduced multiple refreshed or brand new EV-only models over the last year including in the US.
And of course China is going crazy for EVs with many competing domestic manufacturers, a full battery supply chain, and many affordable models to pick from.
The US big 3 and VW canceled several EV product lines because the government policy flipped from subsidizing them to subsidizing ICE production. With the Iran war, the economics has shifted again and some of the products they canceled could have been made profitable, but it's too late for most of them now. This actually creates an opening for Rivian's downmarket R2 line expansion.
Meanwhile the Chinese companies are disrupting the overseas market for all of them (which is why Toyota is fretting). Many don't realize the disruptive potential of China's battery, EV, and solar panel supply chain combined with the oil shock - many subtropical countries are on the verge of flipping their economies to be linked to China's because of this. The long term consequences for American and European manufacturing supply chains will be major - not just in terms of present but future orders, since many of those countries are continuing to grow their consumer base faster than US/EU.
How are they subsidizing ICE production over EVs? Or is it just that the subsidies are easier to get if you don't need to include rare earth elements, which EVs require, in your inventory?
> let’s make good-looking cars that everyone will want to drive!
This is a very unfortunate goal for Toyota specifically to have. I am extremely loyal to driving late 90s/early 2000s toyotas (I have owned at various points a 1997 corolla, a 1999 camry, and a 2000 tundra, and my daily driver today is such a car as well), due to them being extremely cost effective and also extremely reliable. A well-maintained, or even moderately maintained, late 90s/early 2000s Toyota car is, in my experience, almost as reliable as a new car that costs 4x+ the price, and it has the benefit of much less DRM, spyware, and other software bullshit, as well as being much easier to repair. I am also unaware of any modern car that is remotely like this, as well as unaware of any electric car that is remotely like this, except maybe Slate (though this is not available yet, so I am withholding judgement until I can see 3rd party reviews and maybe try one).
But, to summarize, I really like some of Toyota's old work for intensely practical reasons, and I think that this is a gap in the market of cars manufactured today (someone please tell me I am wrong by pointing to a good option on these criteria, preferably an EV!), and I couldn't give a rat's ass about the car being "good-looking", so it's unfortunate (though not surprising) that Toyota is deeming that their goal.
Toyota, like many companies that succeed based on merits beyond the aesthetic, secretly dreams of being an aesthetics-first company like, say, Porche or Ferrari, and always tries their hardest to reject reality so that they can do the sexy-but-awful thing instead of the amazing-but-ugly thing.
You see this recently over the last couple years in tech where everyone is "an AI company" even when they make something totally unrelated - same impulse, different industry.
Yep, the only thing I love about newer cars are dynamic cruise/lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring, and memory seats. Cars from 20 years ago had better controls and were likely cheaper to repair in most cases.
> For example, VW, … have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago
> most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them
You should really reconsider where you get your information from.
“Volkswagen reported more than 70,000 orders for its new Electric Urban Car Family within just a few weeks, while European BEV orders increased by more than 50% in Q2.”
America, where they are pulling models. I have PHEVs and enjoy them, but I am aware that many people are not going to buy EVs with their current specs. Either they live somewhere cold, where range will fluctuate and not be sufficient at times of the year, or they live somewhere that has power outages frequently enough (or at times of emergency) that they do not consider pure EVs. This is especially true for people with only one car. Families that have multiple cars are obviously more open to having one car that's an EV.
Various OEMs have sort of soft-exited the US EV market, but that doesn't mean they're not offering the cars or stop development of them in other markets.
It just means the US market is too unattractive and low-volume for EVs that aren't a Tesla.
You are forgetting the elephant in the room: the charger at home and all the implications that brings in between costs and actual possibility of installation at all.
> the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
Would love a Toyota EV but usually for significantly less I can get a Toyota hybrid with more space. Both my partner's and my vehicles are Toyota hybrid crossovers but we looked for an EV first and realized we simply couldn't justify the extreme price difference for how little our cars are driven. Really hoping when our time for a new vehicle comes we can trade in both for one reasonably priced EV crossover - so hopefully the rest of the planet can continue pushing the EV market forward while the US lags way behind.
Yeah Toyota's PHEVs are quite nice, but the price premium is too much. It basically makes no sense unless you can charge for free at work, and even then you'd have to drive 50,000 miles before it pays off. If you're like most of us and you pay for electricity at home, the inflection point is even further out. How many people even keep cars for that long anymore?
I think the US is still pretty far from saturating the potential market of garage-owning car buyers with EVs, but that is a major hurdle for people who rent or street park and might be interested in saving gas money.
I'm not sure why you got downvoted as I think you are mostly correct.
We've had an EV for 1.5 years and love it. In fact any time I'm in a gas-powered car it feels downright primitive with all the noises and smells and sluggish performance. The range anxiety we experienced at first has completely given way to it being awesome that I never have to stop at gas stations and don't have to waste time/money on oil changes.
But if we couldn't charge at home it would likely be more expensive to fuel than a gas car instead of being much cheaper (but this depends on your local electricity and gas prices).
However, I do think there is still a big pool in the US who haven't even ridden in one to know what they are missing. Americans have never let poor gas mileage stop them from buying a car (or truck) that is bigger or faster or somehow "better" than the economical choice.
It axed the F150 Lightning. They might have later announced that they're going to bring it back as an EREV (pretty much PHEV), but that seemed like a separate decision. If it were the same decision, they would have announced it at the time of the cancellation announcement, to make it seem more like a pivot.
Historically most of these "Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source" platforms have been utter ICE-first EV-distant-fourth-priority shit shows. Most of the exceptions are rather expensive.
True, and it's especially interesting since Toyota I think offers some vehicles only as hybrids/PHEVs. For example, the Camry and RAV4 fall into this category, I think. It's deceptive because it makes it look like the RAV4 PHEV isn't that much more than the base model. But since the base model is already more expensive than an ICE would have been because it's a hybrid, this isn't the true differential between ICE and PHEV.
In general, they've been pretty uninspired. That said, the Hyundai Kona/Kia Niro cousins were pretty much just "replace the engine with a motor and bolt the battery to the bottom" and those were perfectly reasonable cars for the vast majority of actual needs.
Toyota has been very slow on the EV front, and it turns out that was a stroke of luck - demand has cooled off for EVs massively. (especially after the tax credits were killed in the US)
They make some of the best hybrids in existence. Their transmissions, due to being just a planetary gearbox, are essentially unbreakable and require no real maintenance. They're also very, very gas efficient.
It makes sense to keep doing what they know, when they do it well and the US lacks a lot of good EV infrastructure. (Not even fast charging stations, just like simple slow chargers around businesses and parking)
I regret going for a '23 Corolla gas instead of the hybrid, but at the time I was short on cash and didn't know as much about hybrids as I do now. In my mind it was more complicated and failure prone, which isn't the case.
The lesson I take away from Tesla is going for the extremum: if you're going to be BEV, don't compromise. Toyota is ignoring that with a "platform that supports all powertrains, including pure electric".
Tesla doesnt have offering in 30k market, which is likely different story, design and component sharing is important to cut cost. Also, Teslas are premium segment, thus can afford to go extreme.
You're wrong. The best-selling vehicle is the Flying Pigeon bicycle, the standard bicycle from Mao-era China with more than 500 million produced since 1950.
Depends on what counts in that 57 million. Just the base Corolla, or also the Corolla Verso that was actually based on the Avensis platform? What about the Toyota Auris? Toyota Conquest? Holden Nova? Geo Prizm?
I wonder if you combine the numbers of the VW Golf, Rabbit, Bora, Jetta, Corrado and Scirocco if it beats that 57 million.
The main question is whether to count the Corolla at all, given that it's changed so much over the years. The original VW Beetle at ~21M and minimally changed from 1938 to 2003 has a strong claim.
Me too. Not for me, but for my kids. The idea of a dead nuts reliable Toyota EV is appealing. They're not going to blow your socks off with performance or tech, but combining Toyota manufacturing prowess with the inherent superior reliability of EVs could make for one hell of a long term ownership experience.
Am I the only one who thinks those look damned cool? If they provided some kind of stupid engine option to definitively hoon the thing, I’d be all over it.
This does exist, the Maextro S800 is one example. Over 800 mi with the gas extender. For trucks there's the Ram 1500 Ramcharger, and Mahle makes a drop in attachment for EV truckers.
I think for most consumers though, if you want that range I wouldn't go EV. At the point where you're adding extra weight via engine + gasoline you're giving up range, and we've already figured out what the most efficient gas vs battery tradeoff is in hybrids. Like the Hybrid Camry with 600 mi of range is insane, if it had a bigger battery (with current tech) you'd just be losing range from the additional weight
You really do have to do the math using your local costs. I'm in a place with slightly cheaper gas but much cheaper electricity than California. Combined with cheap night time electricity I'm paying under $0.03 per mile for a large EV. I would need 150 mpg vehicle (assuming $4.50 gas) to beat that. However I'm cheating a bit - I'm on a plan which raises my day time electric costs a small amount in exchange for half-price at night, so they're getting some of that back, and I should amortize charger and electrician work ($1600 for me).
What's the math on that? Average kWh in California is around 18 cents. Assuming 0.35 kWh per mile, that's 6.3 cents per mile. You'd need to get 100mpg+ to beat an EV at current gas prices. A brand new Corolla hybrid my family recently bought gets around 40-60 mpg driving around a small city. And that's without factoring in maintenance differences costs per mile.
55mpg is nothing. I get 100+ mpg equivalent on my massive F-150 lightning and if you include cost in the comparison it’s probably a couple of multipliers more than that.
And that's just operating cost. PHEVs have a higher maintenance cost and worse reliability than pure EVs, typically. Certainly higher complexity and more parts.
On top of that, my Lightning was less expensive than the gas equivalent. I've been winning since day one. If I had to sell it today (that would make me so sad), the depreciation would be the lowest of any car I've ever owned.
One of the things that really frustrated me about my Tesla Model 3 was how low it was. I would "look up" at Ford Fusions and other sedans on the road.
In contrast, my Model Y isn't an SUV. It's the height (and ground clearance) of what we used to call sedans, and really feels like a sedan instead of an SUV.
That's interesting, because a Model 3, BMW 3 series, Honda Accord, and Toyota Camry are all within like 10mm of each other in height, and very similar ground clearance as well (the lowest ground clearance is the Accord). The Model Y is like 7 inches taller, very much in the range of a typical comparable CUV.
"We will learn prices closer to launch, but according to Car and Driver, the gas version will likely start at around $25,000, the hybrid around $27,000, and the EV and PHEVs will likely be priced in the $30,000 range."
As far as prices go, that is not that bad for an EV. (These days)
That's right. Nobody wants EVs, and even if there is a niche demand, Chinese companies are dumping them at a national level. (look at the Europe plight)
They'll pretend to sell EVs to keep their options open, but they won't actually sell any.
The interesting part isn’t really that Toyota is making an electric Corolla, it’s that they’re apparently trying to keep one platform flexible enough for ICE, hybrid, PHEV and BEV
why don't Japanese auto-makers embrace the super+ hybrid that was embraced by Chinese auto makers. having electric motors and a small engine to constantly charge / drive the motors.
Japanese auto makers are already good at hybrid power trains, small engines.
surely extended range vehicles - 1000km+/700mi+ shouldn't be limited to Chinese brands only.
Part of that is that we are reaching the point where a plug-in hybrid is actually more expensive to produce than an EV.
Go to Toyota's website today and you'll see that a Rav4 Plug-in Hybrid is more expensive than the bZ which is the equivalent full EV.
Going to an EREV layout (a series plug-in hybrid where the gas engine cannot drive the wheels mechanically) doesn't really save any costs directly, but allows sharing the platform between EV and EREV models.
An EREV is basically the worst of almost all worlds. It's a BEV with a motor tacked on. It ends up with a battery not a lot smaller than a pure BEV, so no real reduction in the cost of an expensive component, plus an engine and generator along with associated maintenance headaches. Not to mention the almost certain loss of cargo capacity.
I can't see myself ever wanting a Lightning EREV, for example, because of this exact issue. If I needed to tow, that would be the sole situation where it might hold enough of an advantage to matter. Aside from that, it will have (most likely) about 75% of the battery the BEV Lightning has, and it will lose the frunk, which is one of my favorite features. Plus, unlike my Lightning with it's 200K mile first required maintenance work, the EREV will probably have to be serviced every 10-20K miles. Ugh.
I think they have, though not as much as they should have.
I have a Sienna minivan that is hybrid and gets 36 MPG which is at least 10MPG more than everyone else using a beefed up version of the drivetrain the Prius created. (I can go 550-600 miles on a tank)
I also got RAV4 Prime which is a plugin electric that uses the same drivetrain tech and can go full electric, hybrid, or full power with both for over 300hp which is fun.
They achieve the best efficiency by using an Atkinson cycle engine which is more efficient but less powerful on the Sienna and Prius. What has confused me more is that things like the Grand Highlander still have a traditional cycle engine in their hybrid setup so you don't get the maximum advantage.
Range extender motors should have been easy to rent and much cheaper for long trips than a full car rental.
It would be very interesting to me to have a small sedan BEV with a rear charging port and an optional flat trailer with a large battery and room for luggage/furniture. The battery would be plugged into that car while driving. I'd want the trailer rentable from the dealer for occasional long trips. BEVs seem to have powerful motors, there must be something else with the economics why this isn't a thing.
Everyone wants to rent that trailer at the same time. That is Christmas break, spring break, and summer vacations. Most of the year it is going to sit unused and so you're going to have to buy your own trailer if you want one not rented because they're just not the economics of it. You'll be paying for it either way because you're going to be the only user.
RVs are where I would think this would make the most sense. People with a travel trailer already have a heavy trailer and they want a lot of battery to get it anyway. beef up the axle a little you can put a thousand pounds of battery on you get more range when you're towing and if there's any left over your RV can run on battery power. It's also very common for them to plug in once they get where they're going and so they can charge on 220 volt power that's already at the RV park and be charged and charge your car while you're at it overnight.
Didn't Toyota bet heavily on hybrid, only to realise that no one really wants them. You have to have a specific daily drive for them to make much sense. You're carrying two engines and to fuel/power sources, so mileage is terrible on gas and battery.
Hybrids make a lot of sense, they just have a lot of the same costs as building EVs and most buyers in the US weren't willing to pay an extra $5k to increase gas mileage by 15%.
Toyota is currently seeing record sales of their hybrid models and has made multiple models hybrid-only as costs have fallen.
Plug-in hybrids with larger battery packs are a harder market fit. They cost more because of the larger battery (often more than full EV equivalents) and are not saving you any extra money unless you can plug it in daily. If you have that extra money to spend and a place to plug an, an EV will probably work fine for you and save you more money over time.
"only to realise that no one really wants them" - 1 of every 6 new cars sold in the US are hybrids
"You have to have a specific daily drive for them to make much sense" - You'd have to have an extremely specific commute for an ICE car to potentially beat a hybrid (flat highway driving with zero traffic). Even then it's doubtful as hybrid engines can be designed to optimize more for efficiency since the electric torque can augment to make performance acceptable. Try to find an ICE car that gets better EPA ratings than equivalent hybrids.
"You're carrying two engines and to fuel/power sources, so mileage is terrible on gas and battery." - The corolla hybrid LE weighs 100lbs less than the ICE LE, in part because hybrid transmissions are quite simple in comparison to a manual/automatic required in an ICE car. In either case, hybrids have a huge advantage in the types of driving where weight matters (stop-and-go/hills) because they can reclaim that energy rather than losing it as heat.
In a pure series hybrid a gas engine acts a generator which charges a battery, which drives an electric motor, which provides power to the wheels.
In parallel hybrids, both the gas motor and the electric motor provide traction, sometimes simultaneously.
Parallel is more efficient if you're depending on gas often, as every conversion has losses. Toyota mostly sells hybrids you can't plug in, and the ones you can plug in are variants of the ones you can't, so they all share the same drivetrain.
As far as I know, such plug-in hybrids directly drive the car forward via the internal combustion engine, which is more efficient than using a (possibly smaller and simpler) engine to charge a battery which then moves the car via electric motors, which is what I understand the person that you're replying to to be describing, though I am not familiar with the specific Chinese cars in question, since those are not options available to me due to living in the United States.
Just give us a normal Corolla with a battery and keep the physical climate knobs and normal door handles. Not every EV needs to look like an iPad on wheels from a 2015 sci-fi concept.
I'm excited about this because this means that I'll easily be able to rent an electric car again from the big rental companies that I can rely on being everywhere. It's currently a massive PITA to do this since they've cut EV inventory across the board so renting an EV car is always a gamble.
I'm holding on to my gas vehicle as long as I can because I really don't like the hybrid sad spaceship noise. I guess I could get it and disable the speaker but then that might void the warranty. The mechanic I go to tells me I can absolutely disable it and they will do it for me but they caution that it will void a warranty. I will continue to drive my old car until it falls apart.
That would be explicitly illegal, it will definitely not void your warranty. It could hypothetically increase your liability if you are involved in an accident where you run over a pedestrian who argues that you were silent when you should have been making noise, but I am not sure this has ever been litigated.
when you injure or kill someone disabled who didn't hear your car and the investigators find that you disabled the sound, you will do time, it's literally a law
tire noise at slow speed is not enough
but some cars do seem to have a good noise and some a bad noise
An electric Corolla makes sense to me. The big question is the price. If it ends up costing much more than the hybrid, it’s going to be a harder sell. Curious what the price gap will be.
I'm suggesting they self-identify by resisting changes customers want.
Detroit fought against safety features until it was forced on them and Volvo led the way. They continued to fight against infotainment, offering horrible in-house trash, until Tesla shamed them with something from this century. All the Japanese makers fought against the EV wave by putting up a fake signal with H2, which they knew would never fly, which let them continue without retooling.
Now, BYD shames them all with scores of features at a reasonable price. If it weren't for protectionism, they'd be wiping up western markets. And to your point, yes Hyundai is old but they're listening to demand and responding by delighting customers.
Nobody's making good lightweight superfast electric sportscars except for Kia (EV6 GT, 600hp). That car is amazing but the interior is super-cheap and Kia failed to "do the Acura thing" that made the NSX respectable (it isn't a "Honda NSX").
The Porsche Taycan is an absolute boat, an old man's car, the thing weighs a ton. Handling is terrible, center of mass is way above the axles. BMW electrics are the same. Mercedes doesn't even have an electric performance car.
The German car companies are really just "mailing it in" when it comes to electic sportscars; they refuse to actually try to build a good one.
Tesla Model S isn't much better and is discontinued.
Other than the $250k+ upcoming roadster and the $60k EV6 GT (cheap cloth seats, no leather option, Kia badge) there's really nothing out there that handles well. Pretty huge gap in the market there.
Sadly, I might have to settle for the Porsche 718. Polestar 6 got me excited, but that project is basically dead, especially with Polestar being effectively banned starting with model year 2027. If the US government got its head out of its ass regarding Chinese cars, I'd REALLY like a BYD Denza Z Spider.
The sad thing is, the Venn Diagram of EV enthusiasts and sports car enthusiasts is almost two separate circles.
That Venn diagram will collapse to the same thing very quickly once someone actually brings out a good electric sports car. Electric has significant advantages in acceleration. As soon as you can use an electric car on a race track, people will discover they're blowing away their competition. On the track we are talking about the difference between your losses during shifts and the full torque right off the line, which is maybe only a second per lap, but a second would be shatteringly huge in a race.
Of course a lot of race rules are very strict and an electric car wouldn't qualify and also most electric cars don't have enough power to show this off but the potential is right there.
I think the batteries just aren't there yet. You need light for a sports car and current gen battery tech (~0.3KW/Kg vs 10+ for petrol) just suck in this use case (and I say that as, generally, an EV supporter). It'll improve but it'll take a while.
What about the Model 3 Performance? It accelerates faster than the EV6 GT, has more range, and is several hundred pounds lighter. Cornering ability seems to be similar, as both get 0.92g in skid pad tests.
If you can live with two seats, Porsche seems to have finally greenlighted production of the electric Boxster/Cayman. I believe that platform will be shared with Audi to make a lower-cost offering available.
The EV6 GT is a 1550mm tall crossover SUV-coupe weighing almost 4900 lbs with 577 hp, but is more of a young man's sports car than a 1380mm tall sedan weighing 100 lbs more but approaching twice the power? Seems sensible.
Who cares if the roof is higher off the ground? The EV6's center of mass is much lower than the Porsche's.
The EV6 GT suspension is vastly superior, and it's active electronic; the Taycan just toggles between two settings ("normal" and "high-clearance" for going over speed bumps).
The EV6 GT's rear differential has electronic control; you can feel it when you take freeway turns at >80mph -- your brain tells you "the rear wheels should be fishtailing"... but they just don't. It's crazy. I think they actually factor in the steering wheel position, something you can't do with a simple mechanical differential. I've never felt anything like that in any other car.
But it still has the Kia badge. And the cheap interior. It's a shame; they could've used this car to launch an "Acura"-like brand with the EV6 GT as their NSX.
Still, Porsche should be embarrassed of the Taycan. That car is a joke.
> Toyota’s current chairman and former CEO, Akio Toyoda, warned in an exclusive interview with Japanese media NHK in July that the company is being forced to adapt, or “it cannot survive,” amid new competition and technology from China.
Finally run out of lobbying options, eh? Good luck with that.
I really don’t think the legacy Japanese or the American auto makers get it. People don’t want goofy offshot designs for their EV’s. They want regular ass looking cars.
I really hope the interior doesn't look like what the concept seems to show, with a bunch of functionality relegated to screens. Screens are terrible UI for cars.
At this point I’d pay a significant premium to the dealership and brand that will:
- A. make me an accessor to any datasets (and derivative reports that include my data if you want an extra poisonous pill) that include my data as a full dump and access log of my records and ‘admin’ activities.
- B. Tear out the telemetry hardware, or let me send it to my own endpoint. No satellite access needed. No thanks, driver cam. Who needs LoJack when we have Flock?
- C. Sell a car that’s built to be owned and operated by a human, not an auto brand. If they want to subscribe to some sort of remote assistance subscription, that would be an aftermarket 3rd party device. Open software and hardware within safety protocols increase the value proposition significantly. I would think this is the lowest TCO option, with standard, locally milled parts.
I think that's what Edison Motors is doing but only for trucks? I don't know how they're getting on now. Maybe they already failed.
You could be the first to make one. I've only heard of Edison because of their social media (so maybe a scam) - but they were showing off how they just bought a random truck and replaced the engine as a prototype
I want a dead simple car with the Waymo Driver installed and integrated.
My current car is a 2026 Model Y, but between public transit, Waymo being available in my town, and, soon, me taking possession of a top-of-the-line Brompton electric folding bike, I hardly drive the thing.
When I do drive it, however, I want it to drive itself, since I'm probably driving because I am either (a) going on a road trip that is made more fun by the car driving itself, or (b) am going somewhere that I have to drive to and am wishing the entire time that I wasn't.
>electric cars also produce way less brake dust particulates
Depends. Compared to a competent driver in a manual transmission, I doubt it. Manual transmission cars can brake with the engine instead of brakes. You also may be on the order of 1-2000+lbs lighter.
Then there's tire dust particulate considerations with the heavier EV with all that torque.
From what I've read, EVs mostly break with the engine, and recover quite some of the energy that way. To the point that I've read warnings about the breaks rusting here in south Sweden, and that you need to do some aggressive breaking now and then to clean them out.
You do know that regen braking is a thing, right? The friction brakes on an EV are basically never applied except in emergencies or at speeds under 10 mph.
EVs end up with unique brake problems because they get used so little.
> Then there's tire dust particulate considerations with the heavier EV with all that torque.
This part is slightly true. EVs are heavier and will wear out tires faster, and if you actually use the extra torque, that'll contribute.
They cancelled and destroyed their 0 Series EV line when it was basically two days away from starting deliveries and now they have absolutely nothing to show for it.
They are so unbelievably fucked. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually pull out of the car manufacturing game and exclusively stick to motorcycles.
Given Toyota's history on EV execution and their chairman who likes to wear the red hat clown costume and parade around and support the Jan 6th insurrection, I'm not waiting around for this mediocre junk to come out. D- for the effort.
They will absolutely make this EV extremely mediocre and then tell the world that nobody wants EVs. Sub 50kW charging, limited to only a few times a day, terrible range, terrible interiors that still don't support iOS/Android screens.
Cars that are designed from the ground up to be EVs tend to be much better than trying to shoehorn an EV into an ICE design.
The new Lexus ES350e, which comes in both hybrid and EV flavors, has been pretty universally panned as a mediocre EV [1]. Lexus anticipates that the vast majority of ES sales will be for the hybrid model, and I expect the same will be true of the Corolla.
The updated bZ and new bZ Woodland on the other hand, which are built as ground-up EVs on the e-TNGA platform, actually seem pretty decent. And I'm hopeful for the upcoming EV Highlander, too (although that will use a modified version of the TNGA-K platform).
I would prefer if Toyota just released a new EV model with roughly the same proportions as the Corolla, instead of going with the one-size-fits-all approach. But maybe they'll finally be able to get it right this time.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ97R1nhq4M
> I would prefer if Toyota just released a new EV model with roughly the same proportions as the Corolla
Indeed. Toyota's days are numbered.
BYD is selling EVs for US$14K in Australia. Toyota is Nokia, they don't know it just yet. Corolla EV is 30K USD, gas 25K.
AUD 19,900 driveway (means taxes, registration etc included), or about US$14K: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49772728
> Indeed. Toyota's days are numbered.
> BYD is selling EVs for US$14K in Australia.
It's not even about BYD. All of Europe is now buying EVs like crazy. How many of these are Toyota? One 40k€ model basically.
Everyone thought Toyota was Nokia when Tesla appeared... I think those days are over. Toyota survived that one already with a facelift for Prius.
BYD Dolphin base in Japan is $19k, the new Racco kei car is $14k. They're not doing so well - they just have no selling point. They're not even the cheapest of EVs in Japan, let alone the cheapest of all cars for Japan - $19k is literally 4k over the current gen JDM Corolla. I think that is an indication that BYD has no secret sauce but their pricing are just introductory one to starve off last bits of Western industrial capacities spared by Japanese automakers.
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Quality matters though. A 10 years warranty as long as you do the prescribed maintenance with hassle free ownership is a major reason why Toyota’s clientele sticks.
It’s not impossible to unseat them. But it’s also far from given.
The weakness of the Yen does a lot for Toyota. You can pick a new Corolla for US$14K if you are buying in Japan.
> BYD is selling EVs for US$14K in Australia
Tech people seem to really be confused about the concepts of revenue and net income; must be the whole VC we lose money on every item, but make it up on volume thing.
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Toyota still sells 10M cars a year and has an enormous manufacturing, supplier and dealer network. That doesn’t disappear overnight because BYD can sell a $14k EV in one market
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Toyota is riding on reputation of quality. If they can keep quality high and maintain the reputation, they will be okay.
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Toyota sells more cars per year than the US manufactures combined.
(Though there is some overlap as Toyota also builds in the US)
> Indeed. Toyota's days are numbered.
Uhhhh excuse me? I just bought a new Toyota Camry Hybrid because its range is 650 miles on a single gas tank. I can drive from Bay Area to LA, drive around LA for 5 days and then drive back home on 1.5 tanks of gas. I love it, and I don't have to spend hours charging. My other car is a Tesla, which I also love but I will never use it for road trips. My friend drove from Chicago to SF and had to charge 15+ times.
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You’re off your head if you think Toyota's days are numbered.
They make the best utes and 4x4 in the world.
BYD trucks haven't won a war yet, so at least in that segment Toyota is safe for now.
> Cars that are designed from the ground up to be EVs tend to be much better
Better here means more efficient, cheaper to assemble, more spacious on the inside, etc. Having to repurpose space left when you remove the combustion engine + fuel systems and other supporting infrastructure to host an electric drive train plus battery typically means compromising on these things. It works but it won't be as good as it could be.
And of course in a market full of competitively priced EVs from vendors that designed them from the ground up to be pure EVs that means fighting with your hands tied behind your back.
This thing will probably still do alright for Toyota. But they'll have to discount it to compensate for it just not being all that great compared to its more optimized competition.
Toyota is very good at selling things at a bargain though. They are actually holding up pretty well compared to other legacy manufacturers (they even managed a bit of growth last year in units sold). But it's in a market that except for EVs isn't growing much where the Chinese manufacturers are expanding their market share globally at the cost of pretty much everyone else. Toyota is kicking the can a bit down the road here. Probably to buy some time to build something better in a few years. But they might be milking this platform for quite some time.
Toyota have more or less explicitly stated the thing which I think all the "legacy" manufacturers are struggling with: moving to EVs obliterates the engine division, which is both part of their competitive advantage and would make a lot of people redundant. A more middle class version of the transition away from coal mining making a lot of dead mining towns. And similarly, it has to happen in order to keep global warming below 2C.
>Corolla is expected to come in several powertrains, including gas, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric.
And also it’s just going to be confusing for the customers. Which one to get? Which one is better? It’s hard to imagine how same platform can have efficient structural layout for the large battery and for the ICE engine.
EV is much about software as well, and Toyota is not going to shine in this area either…
Arguably hybrids rely on software much more than EVs do since it has to all the motor/battery management EVs do, but also coordination with the engine and transmission which EVs do not have, and Toyota has been the leader in that area for almost 3 decades now.
Unless you mean software as in fart apps on the touch screen, then yeah, Toyota lags in that department.
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I don't think "which one to get" has been a problem for choosing cars -- much easier than choosing between i3/i5/i7 (or whatever they are called these days), and most consumers understand what they mean and the tradeoffs. It basically comes down to these questions -- do you want to pay more on the car to save on gas in the long run (hybrid)? Do you want to be able to plugin and charge your vehicle similar to an EV (PHEV)? Do you want to get rid of gas completely (EV)? And I'm sure salespeople will happily walk this over for a buyer.
> efficient structural layout
They don't need to be the most efficient on the market. Efficiency varies a lot among cars, and people don't make purchase decisions solely based on that (if at all).
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IMO a prospective car buyer likely has a preference towards a certain drivetrain already.
An age old choice betwen petrol and diesel never seemed to be a problem, and electric vs hybrid/ICE are way more different to each other.
And as for the car software- after driving a new Prius I don't see any areas where Tesla's or BYD software is significantly ahead unless we are talking navigation which is shit either way, and I'd rather prefer car play
> Which one to get?
The one that suits your use-case.
Don't have any way to charge it? Get a hybrid.
Don't go on long road trips, or when you do, you're OK with waiting a bit? Get an electric.
Want to spend a fortune on petrol? Get a gas one.
Otherwise, get a PIH.
Some excellent EVs are based on the CMA platform, which also supports combustion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Modular_Architecture
Polestar 2, Volvo XC40 & C40 (now EX40/CX40)
Not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Modular_Platform . It seems like every surviving manufacturer has one of these, especially when the company like Stellantis is a cut-and-shut of struggling brands.
The upside of using a platform for EV and hybrid engines is that it typically looks a lot better aesthetically than an EV only platform.
Just look at the Mercedes S class versus the EQS. The EQS was ground up designed as an EV and because of the design decisions made in that process is the ugliest Mercedes designed ever.
Same with the Audi A6 which was always a masterclass in design and now is a generic blob of a car with the new EV only model.
The aesthetic has nothing to do with it being an EV. They just designed it to be ugly.
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Cue the adage "we don't want your electric car, we want your car, electric".
I assume the same is true for the new C-HR+, right? It shares the name with the hybrid C-HR, but as far as I understand that's just marketing and it's actually based on the bZ platform.
Our 2004 RAV4 is dying and I'm seriously considering the C-HR+, not because of brand loyalty but because it seems to be one of the best EVs I can find on the market. 600+ km range and 224 HO for around 35k€, plus actual physical knobs in the car and mechanical door handles seems like a great deal to me.
> I would prefer if Toyota just released a new EV model with roughly the same proportions as the Corolla
I think the issue is time and money. Toyota maybe doesn't want to spend the money on a completely different car in the compact sedan category just for EVs - at least not yet. Plus, it might mean waiting several years when they want something out now. Sometimes it's about tradeoffs like time and money. Adapting an ICE Corolla might be reasonably cheap and fast. They might feel the need to have an EV Corolla out sooner than later. They might want to take their time with a new platform EV so that they don't put out something that doesn't meet their quality standards. While the drivetrain might be different, everything else in the Corolla is battle tested.
Further, Japan is especially hard hit by the Strait closing. Toyota may have thought they had years before they had to go fully EV, but the world has forced their hands. They need to be offering options today.
I agree that it's much better to design an EV to be an EV from the ground up. The reality is, however, that consumers don't want EVs for a myriad of reasons and prefer hybrids. And developing two completely different platforms is too expensive even for a higly profitable company like Toyota.
Might be true in some countries but EVs are rapidly becoming the highest sellers in many others. My experience is that once people experience an EV for the first time they prefer it over a hybrid/ICE car, unless there's a practical reason for needing hybrid range (which most people will argue but don't need day to day).
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> The reality is, however, that consumers don't want EVs for a myriad of reasons and prefer hybrids.
I think this is completely true for the period 2010 - 2030.
But from 2030 onwards, it seems 4 things are structurally different in many markets: 1. energy per kilometer, improved about 30% (from about 5 km per kWh to about 6.5) 2. kwh of useable battery, increased by about 80% 3. chargers per person, increased by about 20x 4. Charge speed increased by 5x from about 50 kW to 250 kW
All these figures are approximate averages for normal EVs, the very low / very high end are different.
So we have more battery, which we use less of to drive, which we can charge faster, and at way more places.
The reality is that an average European for example drives about 30km per day. Take the base model Tesla 3, it has 575 km of range and can charge 285 km in 15 minutes. The base model. So for the average driver that's a ~15 minute charge, every 10 days. For the average person an EV makes more and more sense.
That's today, for a base model car, which is suffering from cheap and quality competition out of China that will be even better.
Cars that will be released in 3 years from now (>2030) are even more favorable. I honestly think the 'myriad of reasons to prefer a hybrid' is soon going to be an exception, not the rule, for newly purchased cars (of course the 2nd hand market is a different, delayed story). And compromising your car design won't let you compete with manufacturers that don't compromise and go fully EV.
If you consider the squeeze that regulators worldwide are going to be putting on gas the next decades, I think going full-EV on new models makes sense. Sure you can keep selling some ICE cars but developing entirely new ICE models, and mixing an EV into them?
You mean American consumers. Toyota still has to consider the rest of the world while America is basically a shrinking market now.
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Consumers don't want an expensive EV. Now that EVs are becoming cheaper than ICE vehicles, they will take over the market because they are the better product.
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Seems like a chicken-and-egg problem. Part of the reason consumers don't want EVs is because there are limited options that are any good.
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What consumers want varies a lot by country and region. It becomes apparent if you look at a map, e.g. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/european-alternative-fuels-ob... , that there's a sort of ""geographic contagion"" as adoption spreads out from Norway.
Part of this is charger infrastructure. But I think part of it is also social proof: once someone you know has an EV, or you start seeing them parked around you, it looks like a more realistic option. People don't like the unknown.
Differential cost also matters. This doesn't have to be subsidies, but most countries are afraid to tax new ICE vehicles to the extent that Scandinavian countries do.
In all markets where Chinese EVs are available, BEV sales significantly outstrip hybrids in 2026. EU, Australia, you name it.
At the end of the day hybrids are a transitional technology, and it makes sense to ditch the ICE entirely as soon as you can.
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That is not true of Australia consumers.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/04/ev-sales...
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Current Toyota engines - several years in production already - used in hybrids have 40% thermodynamic efficiency, new Chinese engines (Geely and BYD) - 45% and soon coming out Toyota engine is claimed to hit 50%. With the numbers like this the hybrids ( and plugins, given the falling prices and increasing charge/weight density of the batteries) seem to still have a long and profitable path forward.
Granted it may result in Toyota losing the battle in the long run. On the other hand any large improve in batteries may gradually bring Toyota into EV world just by letting to upsize the plugins' batteries.
Personally i like very much my 2015 Prius Plugin, and the only thing i'd want about it is to have additional 20KWh of batteries (may be one day i'll throw them in myself :)
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I think if OEMs prioritized phevs more as a gateway drug, the transition to EVs would have been a lot less painful in NA. Even just driving a PHEV with 50km electric range makes you appreciate how great an EV can be.
Sadly, there's few good PHEV options. And even Toyota underserves this market.
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"Consumers don't want EVs" is an absolutely insane take. You're disqualified from this discussion.
It's not consumers decision, it's a dealers mafia. If everyone on EV, you will not change oil and other gasoline attributes repairs. If you have hybrid, it's a cherry on the top, best of both worlds, pay for regular issues of gas and electric car combined :)
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I personally never wanted "an EV", I just wanted a car that happened to have an electric drivetrain. So Stellantis's choice to present models with a choice of drivetrains suited me perfectly. I'm neither ashamed nor proud to drive electric, it's just a choice I made and it doesn't need to be part of my identity.
This feels like Toyota optimizing for Toyota rather than for the EV buyer
Which is kinda ironic because Toyota is probably the only one that did hybrid from the ground up with their HSD transmission.
That looks like a completely new car with the sub model being Corolla… it looks nothing like the Corolla of today and past..
BMW i3 has entered the chat.
And left production, since politics decided to kill the EV AFAICT.
Yeah, that's why Tesla, Polestar and even BYD work so well.
The first Hyundai Ioniq did this pretty good. Exceptions exist.
Unfortunately, companies still try to make EVs -- even when designed from the ground up to be electric-only -- pretend to be ICE, for example with forward creep. I really wish I could turn that off. (For some reason, "one-pedal driving" is some super integrated all-in-one feature that has grown to include the lack of forward creep, so the ability to turn off the forward creep apparently gets consumed by unwillingness to implement the entirety of one-pedal driving. Which unfortunately affects my vehicle)
That's also because people prefer Hybrids.
My Mii/Citigo/e-Up EV is a retrofit, but it's a really great EV.
Something very strange, at least for me, is that Toyota seems to be pushing the electric and hybrid motors very hard.
For example, here in Greece you can only find a Hybrid Yaris and Yaris cross. No diesel, no petrol. I know a lot of people that don't care about the premium they need to pay for th Hybrid and would prefer a normal petrol (or even diesel) car with manual transmission. Toyota seems to not care about these customers.
Why don't they put there great diesel or petrol motors to Yaris and get a lot of money and prefer to only push for Hybrid ?
Hybrid almost certainly has a substantially lower total cost of ownership due to lower fuel costs and reduced brake wear. I think fuel efficiency standards ought to essentially mandate them.
Ugh. I saw the headline and I was hoping it would be an entry-level, low cost, highly analogue, "looks just like a normal car but electric" car.
Yes!
The closest thing I could find to a "normal car but electric" was the Hyundai Kona EV (I know, it's more small-SUV than 'car). So, I bought one.
It's good. There are physical controls for the temperature and volume, and the door handles aren't stupid.
I walked away from a Ford Mach-E because I didn't want to have to explain how to open the doors to ever person I drove for the next five years.
The new Chevy Bolt EV is also a "normal car but electric" to me. It's not a car, but it's not a huge SUV either. It has physical controls, you can disable the modem by pulling the OnStar fuse, and it has a decent range and decent fast charging.
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But isn't that what the Corolla was?
Note that this is a concept, I've never seen an actual production model look anything like the concept.
My father has a hybrid model, 2023 MY I think. It has physical controls for the radio, for AC and related things, for the heated seats, for the various "driver assist" features (like auto high beams, a parking thing (no idea what that is), radar, lane assist). It has a touchscreen, but that only seems to handle the maps, fancy radio controls (think equalizer and such), and other "car settings", whatever those are. You can absolutely drive it without ever having to interact with the touchscreen while doing normal things. I hate touchscreen controls as much as the next HN poster, but I have strictly 0 beef with the Corolla on this front. Door handles and windows work exactly the same as on my 2005 "dumb" car. Hell, I think it even has a physical toggle for the "automatic night mode" on the rear-view mirror, while mine couldn't be "non automatic".
To GP's point, I don't think it ever was an "entry level" car, just a "normal compact" car. I don't see why adding an electric drivetrain would have someone expect it would somehow become a basic, "entry-level" car.
I don't say we don't need those, but the Corolla never seems to have targeted that market, at least here in Europe. There always were plenty similar-sized cheaper and more basic cars from domestic manufacturers. Is it different in the US?
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Kia Niro is where the Koreans have invested their stuipd; a stateful panel in which volume and temperature knobs are multiplexed, and and so are tactile-free touch places on the panel between them. And it won't stay in the same mode; it changes it behind your back. You think the knob is volume because you last tweaked it a minute ago, but nope, you are messing with the temperature now.
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Had found this in the 2nd generation Nissan Leaf. It would have been perfect but for the slow and non-standard charger.
Looking forward to the Volkswagen ID Polo hitting the used market in a couple of years. Physical buttons, decent range and charge times, and it’s rated to pull reasonable loads.
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A lot of EV design seems to assume every familiar control is a problem that needs to be reinvented
The OG Ioniq (not the 5) was also sold as two kinds of hybrid (self-charging and charging) as well as full EV.
I think Volkswagen ID.4 is alright. It's perhaps a bit small. Also - I kind of like the ID.Buzz though not sure if it will sell.
Not quite normal but not "future" - the Renault 5 E-tech electric is nice but I don't think it's available in the US.
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3 button presses just to start driving. I hated kona so bad. Annoying bing bongs, no app and of course we hit wheel of fortune issue.
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I think there's a surprisingly large market for an EV that's basically "a Corolla, but electric" rather than another attempt to make the interior look like a concept car from 2035
It's not even "concept car from 2035", it's "concept car from 2015 trying to look like a car from a sci-fi story set in 2035"
And I agree. People like normal cars, people like normal door handles, people like A/C and heater knobs, people like PRNDL levers. None of that has changed just because the drivetrain uses a different kind of engine. Why is it so hard to make that, but electric? Why does "electric motor" somehow mean "all controls must be on the iPad"?
I hope it's just a phase that's about to reverse. Maybe they felt the need to go all futuristic design to cash in on how electric drivetrains used to feel futuristic. Maybe, as electric drivetrains just become "normal, boring" technology, we get options with normal designs too.
The article does say that the electric Corolla is to be priced at $30k, about $3,000 more than the hybrid and $5,000 more than the gas-powered one. That may not be objectively 'low cost', but it's comparable in cost to the lowest-cost new EVs, and probably similar total cost of ownership to the hybrid/gas cars when considering cheaper fuelling.
Maybe they could shave $3-5000 off the cost by not giving it a "high-tech interior", going completely against the design philosophy of the car in the first place.
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Omitting the cellular modem would be a nice way to save a few bucks, and would save me the effort of pulling the fuse or disassembling the dash in order to silence Internet traffic to and from the car. But how will Toyota sell my driving habits to car insurance companies then?
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I'm not in the US, but here in Europe Toyota's hold their value really well (too well I'd say). Is that reflected in the US financing rates, so you can get it for really low payments?
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That's not bad. Those are going to be some fantastic value used cars, eventually.
It is low cost! The Tesla Model 3 was twice the cost almost a decade ago.
BTW: The price premium for electric is offset by the lower cost of electricity, and the fact that electricity's cost is much less volatile than gas.
Depends on where you live. In states like Connecticut, or certain areas of California (PG&E Bay Area customers), the ROI is very long or simply doesn't pencil out at all. I think for Connecticut, which has high electricity prices but low gas prices, it's just net negative. For me in SF, despite high gas prices the ROI is just too long (5-10 years?), and that's before factoring in the ~$5000+ required for updating my electrical box, which is a conservative estimate because now the city requires the meter to be outside the house, whereas it's currently in the garage.
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"BTW: The price premium for electric is offset by the lower cost of electricity…"
How about depreciation though?
My sense is that after so many years (5?, 8?) an EV is going to be desperate for a new battery. That's, what, $5K (10K?) or more? It's like if an ICE car needed a new engine after 65K miles.
I assume the resell value for an 8-year old electric needing a new battery is close to zilch.
I want an EV, but they have to come way down in price.
It's not just that. EV charging and solar resources have improved while fossil fuels have become more expensive. The maths is very regional. Some countries are better at producing electricity or oil than others.
Looks like most of the images are concepts. I wonder if the looks will change before launch? And they do say the cost is only a few k above the gas models. Something to wait and see, I guess.
Yes, concept cars are more about the stylistic "vibe" than actual design cues.
Wonder if they'll have different battery sizes like Hyundai does.
I'd expect it to look similar to the current Prius and not like these concepts.
https://www.toyota.com/prius/
> entry-level, low cost, highly analogue
there is a chance that slapping one screen is now lower cost than few dozens mechanical knobs, connectors and sensors
There is also a chance I won't buy a car without knobs. Car software has been historically so bad. My latest doesn't have a volume knob so my front passengers can't turn the volume at all (the UX is sliding the screen from the side to get navigation bars to appear which contain a volume button that you have to drag laterally - no increase/decrease software buttons). Otherwise it's a great car and that is literally the one drawback.
I must be the minority surely, but given the choice between knobs and screen, knobs are the deciding factor. Even if it's more expensive, it's UX that you use permanently while operating heavy machinery!
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Id argue by an order of magnitude. Knobs require cables, connectors and assembly; they also require dedicated robots and/or a human to test them in the assembly line.
To be honest in my opinion car design got so boring in general since about 20 years ago that it's nice to see it mixed up with these hyper futuristic concept designs.
It makes the future feel fun, and feels like a return to adventurous aesthetics for the pure sake of it. At the very least, it's noticably different and interesting. I hope architecture follows suit.
They've been making concept cars that entire 20 year period.
They just get completely watered down for production. As will happen here. That's why they're concepts.
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Highly analogue? We all want that but you have to realize we aren't ever getting that. The incentives aren't there.
I don't mind analogue buttons or anything and I think screens can kind of suck especially with Android and auto manufacturer abandonware, but with the Tesla I now own I'm always wondering what people are using all these buttons for - thinking back to my previous Hondas. In the Tesla I've got climate control, heated seats, and music/navigation. Some of the other features like adjusting mirrors I can use the multi-purpose buttons for in the correct context. On any given drive I hop in, put my phone on the charger and don't use it, and then just drive.
What am I missing? Or is it just that folks want buttons? Is it the design?
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No one actually wants highly analog car. Also it's illegal to sell in most countries. Mandatory cameras, safety features, emergency assistance etc
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the slate truck is about as close as we'll get to that.
Sorry, best anyone can do in 2026 is spyware on wheels.
Toyota does sell those. Just not in EU/NA. Toyota hyryder sells in India for 15k Euros.
Hyryder is not an EV, it's hybrid
The exterior design language is the same as their current newer models like the C-HR or even the GR GT. The interior is like any other concept car. I don't like it either, but it looks like a normal Toyota.
[dead]
Please. I am begging EV manufacturers to just make a normal car. The body looks fine but why does every EV have to have the absolute worst cabin ever designed?
The article says the gas version will look the same, so it matches your "looks just like a normal car but electric car" requirement.
Look into the Nissan Leaf, one of the early EV models. I don't know what the 2026 is like but my 2021 has 220-ish miles of range and is... an electric car.
It's a car. That's electric.
Physical buttons. Normal doors. Normal design. Normal handles. Normal controls. Drives great and accelerates better than an economy gas car.
As a bonus, that means almost the entire car is standard. Other than the electric drive train, a regular mechanic can work on everything else: tires, wheels, brakes, suspension, etc.
It's given us basically zero problems. Maintenance so far is a few minor recall items (free fixes) and a tire rotation. We bought it new during COVID.
Only downside to the 2021 model was the CHaDemO (or however you caps it) plug, which is obsolescent. I think recent models have CCS. There is a converter dongle and if I fast charged often I'd pick one up. Apparently they work but they're a little pricey since unfortunately it's not just a simple plug converter. It's a different signaling and locking system, so it has to be a smart dongle.
The Leaf is massively underrated IMO.
The 2026 Leaf made some big improvements. Liquid cooled battery, faster charging, longer range.
It has the usual modern car cost cutting where steering wheel inputs are plastic panels with mysterious capacitive regions and no feedback so you can't feel if you've successfully pressed anything, whether you pressed the right thing, or if your fingertips are too dry and don't register. Most of the center console inputs are replaced with a screen with another row of cheap capacitive touch icons below it.
Charging is behind the times again with an awkward 2-port arrangement, but it's different from the previous gen's J1772 L1/L2 and CHAdeMO for L3 up to 50 kW.
For 2026 they replaced the CHAdeMO port with NACS, supporting a maximum of 150 kW L3 charging, but it still uses a separate J1772 port for L1/L2 unlike every other car where the NACS port does both.
All things considered it's a solid entry level EV.
There used to be huge FUD campaigns against Leafs, and against not many others. Perhaps because Leaf at face value could have rendered entry trim Model S and Model 3 pointless.
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If it makes you feel better, this is a concept. They probably won't produce the vehicle they showed, especially since customers are making it known that they want regular buttons/door handles/HVAC vents/etc.
... probably.
I picked up a '25 Subaru Solterra (rebadged Toyota bz4X) for a decent lease deal and while I'm surprised how little I think about the EV parts the "car parts" are dreadful.
I really need to do a write-up on the dichotomy of EV things being good (charger works, no real battery QC issues, it's a RAV4-but-EV) while all of the shared ICE parts (anything in the software stack) are riddled with bugs or head-scratching defaults.
Overall, a fine car for me, but (as much as I do not like El*n) Telsa is so significantly beyond their offerings it's hard to overstate.
EDIT:
I forgot to add but I think the cost savings for EVs can be a wash, make sure you check the following:
1.) can't charge at home / live in an apartment.
1a.) If you do install a L2 charger at home, you will significantly reduce your cost savings.
2.) you rely on fast-chargers in any significant capacity.
3.) Double check the math on any lease, loan, etc. on new EVs vs. a beater gas car. Especially if you pay an EV tax in your state or country. (Post-COVID the $2K beater car seems to have gone extinct here...)
in contrast, i bought a 2026 Subaru Uncharted, which is a clean sheet EV design, collaboration on powertrain components between Subaru and Toyota, and it's awesome. My BMW i4 xdrive 40 handled worse, had software bugs, cost about 50% more, and had a cheaper interior with truly stupid engineering choices, but you could choose from more colors. I had a clean sheet ev design i3 for about 8 years before that and it was cool.
I wonder, from your comments, and my cars, if the trick is ev-only designs, as the Solterra has various altered versions, as did the i4, whereas my i3 and Uncharted were designed only to be EVs.
edit: charging L2 at home is great, to your point.
It's weird to me because they apparently have the same issues across their gas cars that sell enormously well.
My friend with a '25 taco has issues with remote start, fob range and infotainment stability.
My friend with a '24 corolla has the same issues on his car.
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I hadn't heard of the uncharted, sounds like it's closer to a C-HR electric than anything else? not that there's anything wrong with that. I love subes and drive an old one but they have a certain vibe that I wonder if the Toyota collab takes away.
all kind of academic since I'm planning on getting a slate but it's nice to know Subaru is bouncing back from that Solterra disaster.
I got a used EV about 3 years ago and I don't think I saved money. The car lost 10,000 CAD in value. I have to pay the dealer for repairs and maintenance, which is really expensive. I only drive about 15,000 km per year, so even though I mainly charge at home, I don't think the money saved on gas is more than the money lost in other ways. I'm actually in the process of changing to a 2010 Toyota Yaris. Cheap DIY maintenance, good fuel economy, cheap insurance, super reliable etc etc. And I like the idea of having actual buttons and no screens, a manual shifter, and even a car that goes vroom.
We looked at the Solterra in 2025 and it was genuinely awful, I can't believe anyone who works at a car company looked at it and thought "this is substantially better and will sell more than the Pontiac Aztek despite aesthetically and practically being worse in many regards". The interior center console feels like a prank, almost.
I never will (also because of Elon), but this comment makes me curious to experience a Tesla. Are they really so much better? I've heard endless bad things about their build quality.
After returning a '25 Mercedes EQB (employee lease), I bought a used '23 Solterra, and it seems like a better than linear downgrade (that is, the overall experience is a bit worse, but the price is lower by more than how much worse it is). The software and interface are all completely fine, and stay out of the way of driving and Android Auto. And I'm rather glad for the lack of some of the bells and whistles, because the dashboard screen on the MB had too much going on.
I own very first model Y, but wouldn’t buy the facelift. Changing gears swiping touchscreen is too much despite many real improvements. Build quality is definitely not premium, but it was single electrical vehicle I was able to afford and use as a substitute for petrol car. Many others at the time were good only as 2nd or 3rd car in the household.
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I've been in my friends Model 3 many times and it's full of "oh why didn't anyone think of this before" and EV-centric choices. There's stupid stuff too (no turning stalks or shifter) but even ignoring the software choices it's really that much better of a car.
> The software and interface are all completely fine
Perhaps whatever platform mine, my friends corolla and friends taco are on is just busted but I wish it had even 70% reliability of just working when I'm using anything software related.
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> Are they really so much better?
They have ups and downs.
The build quality has improved significantly, though I would not put them on the level of a Toyota or anything. Maybe Ford.
The software is mostly quite a lot better, the quality of the infotainment exceeds almost anything else you can buy. The remote control ability is also exceptional. But they have glaring omissions like a refusal to support CarPlay. Or a persistent need to prove that vision can replace a bog standard IR rain sensor (it still cannot).
They do get some things right that for whatever reason seem difficult to get from other makers (like a simple climate hold when you park, or dog mode). And love it or hate it, FSD is light years ahead of anything else you can buy as a consumer. I won't pay for it, because I like to drive, but it now exceeds any expectation I ever had for it. I would wager that if I put grandma's house in the nav system and told the car to drive all the way there (about 175 miles distant), it would most probably take me all the way from my garage to grandma's driveway (and park) without me doing anything other than putting it in drive and hitting start.
I loathe Elon and this was a pretty big consideration, but I do not make purchases based on single factors, and overall the value proposition was impossible to ignore. Partly this is because there is basically zero competition for an M3P.
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I got a Model 3 in 2020 and I still don't see anything competitive from other manufacturers. There are so many little things that it does right. You pair your phone with the car, so when you walk up to it and pull on the door handle, it opens. If you're not next to the car and someone else tries to open the door, it's locked. Each driver has their own profile which saves things like UI preferences, acceleration settings, seat position, side mirror angles, climate control, etc. So if my wife was the last person to drive the car and I open the driver's side door, the seat moves to my position. The mirrors adjust to my settings, and so on.
Even though my car has the older hardware, the self-driving is far beyond anything else I've used. It makes road trips far less tiring. I basically sit in the driver's seat while it drives from charging station to charging station. I've gone hundreds of miles without touching the steering wheel. Usually I intervene because I want to park in a specific spot, as the car tends to choose spots that are less convenient. Also it likes to park in my neighbor's driveway instead of mine. (The driveways are about 5 feet apart.)
The phone app lets you control all kinds of stuff remotely. I like to turn on the climate control before going to the car, that way my kid's car seat won't be uncomfortably warm on a sunny day. You can view the cameras from your phone, lock/unlock the car, open/close the windows, and open the trunk & frunk. And it works anywhere there's cell network connectivity, not just within direct radio range of the car.
I'd love it if more cars had these sorts of features, but I don't see it happening any time soon. Tesla seems to be a software company that happens to make cars, while everyone else is a car company that happens to make some software.
I've had not a single "quality issue" with my Model 3 other than the cabin air filter. The car interior stinks worse than any other car I've owned, if it isn't replaced on time! I too have heard a ton of bad things on Reddit. Then I went on the subreddits where people actually owned them. Those folks really seemed to like their cars. I can't say I LOVE the car... removing turn signals, wiper controls and ability to physically shift into reverse seem like brain-dead moves. Otherwise though? It's a lovely care to drive.
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Does Eyesight beep at you frequently? My 2020 Outback beeps every time it can't see the lanes, which is about once a mile where I live. I'll probably never by another Subaru because of that issue alone.
Fossil cars are cooked and even Toyota is implicitly agreeing.
BYD makes cars that can charge in about 10 minutes and honestly deliver 500km+ of range. Every advantage that combustion based cars used to have has dissipated by now.
Except for upfront cost and used inventory, two of the biggest factors for a huge percentage of the population
Why does every car manufacturer peddle these overly complex designs with massive displays, a futuristic aesthetic, etc?
People drive Corollas because they're cheap and reliable. Give me that with an electric motor.
Looking at my Nissan Leaf it is entirely possible to build a reliable car with real buttons and knobs everywhere, and thats the problem for the industry. The used market is flooded with perfectly good Leafs, dirt cheap, the lowest yearly maintenance vehicle on CarEdge.
Even ICE cars have gotten a little too good over the last couple of decades, I see plenty of early 2000s models driving around today looking perfectly fine.
How are these corporations supposed to maximise profit if they keep churning out perfectly sensible vehicles?
the leaf is the cheap shitbox this country needs!
That's what the market expects from an EV
This is what the market is being told to expect from an EV.
The Dacia Spring is what the market actually seems to want:
https://www.dacia.co.uk/hybrid-and-electric-range/spring-cit...
It's a car, not an Autobot.
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Yeah, a lot of people on Hacker News are asking for a bare-bones EV, but that market isn't big enough for US or Western carmakers to justify building one. Still, I'd bet that over the next few years, as batteries keep getting cheaper, we'll see plenty of these bare-bones cars in Africa and Asia. They're already building electric tuk-tuks, and as solar power electrifies more of the world, we'll get bare-bones EVs.
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Toyota's EVs share most of the same components as their non-EVs, like door handles and screens. They have become the fourth best selling EVs behind the Teslas and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 in recent months.
It isn't what I want and it seems many people on- and off-line agree with me.
How do you know if there isn't a sensible car to compare it with? Nobody wants something that looks like a tesla
I drive an EV. It sucks. Sucks. Sucks. Worst driving experience of all cars I've owned. The lack of buttons and crappy HVAC controls are things I notice daily.
Outside of Tesla owners, I don't know a single EV owner who praises these elements. The EV market does not want this.
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ID Polo? Simple, Cheap and has tons of buttons.
Literally just today I got delivery of a Corolla Sport. And would have bought a full EV one if it existed. Oh well!
I literally want a 1995 Toyota Starlet, with its spartan interior, just with an electric drivetrain and a price tag that reflects. A standard 2 din screen with android auto is enough tech for me.
You could attempt a conversion yourself. People take this up as a hobby (e.g. https://www.diyelectriccar.com/ ) ; presumably to be able to pull up next to a muscle car at the traffic light in their antique 2CV and then out-accelerate them when the light turns green.
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and all it took was two decades and millions of spend in anti-EV lobbying before they finally gave in, huh
(also kind of wild to me that an EV focused blog wouldn't mention this a single time since Toyota is (was?) arguably one of the staunchest and most stubborn anti-EV manufacturers out there)
Toyota was broadly right in their approach to EVs. They were pioneers in hybrids. They had excellent hybrid cars like Prius that have been around forever. Their low end cars are extremely fuel efficient too that making them hybrid does not really offer marginal benefits.
Now most companies have written off their crazy investments in EVs. Honda has discontinued Prologue and so on.
at first, sure, but they've since donated large amounts of money to climate-change deniers who fight hard against electrification and emission standards
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/toyota-scrutinized-after-rest...
I do feel like y'all need to read the news more instead of just going by brand rep
They have also been slowly, but surely, moving all their vehicles to HEV/PHEVs (at least in Canada). For example, you can only buy a new Camry, Sienna or Rav-4 (most popular SUV in the world) in hybrid/PHEV form.
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I am with Toyota on this one. They have done more to reduce carbon emissions than any other automaker. Hybrids, particularly plug-in hybrids, achieve most of the benefits of EVs without any of the tradeoffs, and they make far more efficient use of our limited supply of batteries.
Public policy should not insist on one technology to the exclusion of viable alternatives.
Fuel cells are stupid, though.
please, I beg of you HNers, maybe read the news instead of just going by your brand sentiment
https://www.citizen.org/article/driving-denial-how-toyotas-u...
> Over the last three electoral cycles, Toyota has become the top auto industry financier of climate deniers[4]. It has helped to finance campaigns of 207 climate-denying congressional candidates, more than twice as many as Ford and nearly 50% more than General Motors, the only other automakers with federal political action committees (PACs)
> [Toyota] is bankrolling an army of climate denying lawmakers and lobbying aggressively against emissions and fuel economy standards
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There is no limited supply of batteries. Production is growing and prices are declining rapidly.
We don't really have a limited supply of batteries. At least not so limited as to prevent every passenger vehicle having a large enough one.
I mean for gosh sakes, they make semitrucks, boats, and planes with batteries. Huge grid storage systems as well.
They were neither anti-EV in the past nor will they stop producing Internal Combustion Engine vehicles in the future
based on what? there's so many sources noting their anti-EV lobbying
https://chargedevs.com/newswire/toyota-actively-lobbies-agai...
https://thedriven.io/2026/06/17/japan-car-giants-still-pushi...
https://blog.ucs.org/dave-reichmuth/why-does-toyota-oppose-c...
and here's their CEO going on a tirade about Japan's EV-adoption mandate: https://evannex.com/blogs/news/puzzled-by-toyota-ceo-s-anti-...
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They were AMAZINGLY anti-EV a few years ago. They couldn't shut the heck up about hydrogen being endgame and even shipped a flagship car that used the technology to prove it. (It barely sold, you couldn't refuel it outside of the Bay Area and the entire program was eventually written off.)
I don't believe either of those statements.
> [...] since Toyota is (was?) arguably one of the staunchest and most stubborn anti-EV manufacturers out there
Wait till you hear about German car manufacturers. It's not even that long ago that e.g. Mercedes said that their target audience doesn't want EVs and they will never (!) give in to that market. Now look at them. All of them.
That could be caused by EU regulation because they have to meet fleet emission standards. Pretty much the only way to get there is to sell some EVs.
I was going to say "about time", but actually about 3 years too late.
Don't they have existing EV models, though?
https://blog.ucs.org/dave-reichmuth/why-does-toyota-oppose-c...
it's sunk cost on their hydrogen cell R&D - they want there to still be room for that instead of going with electrification but they have to diversify their portfolio to keep up with markets
> "Toyota in particular has been vocal that they are uninterested in making ZEVs available in California. [...] Toyota has invested in hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles [instead]."
Yep bz, chr, bz woodland and the upcoming highlander Bev, at least - but they’re late to the game for sure.
They have large electric cars / SUVs, but not small EVs.
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The only reason I don't drive an EV is that I live in an apartment building that won't install chargers. Given this limitation, I drive a Corolla hybrid and it's great - it drives smoothly like an EV, and mileage is good (although war in the middle east isn't great for prices). If it was practical for me to have an EV, I would probably stay clear from Toyota. Even though they have a great reputation for reliability of their hybrids, they spent decades bad-mouthing EV and the bz4 is markedly less reliable than their hybrids. Hyundai Ioniq 6 is looking good I guess.
I had to sell my EV and go back to ICE for the same reason: my new apartment didn't have EV charging, and non-Tesla DC fast-chargers in my area (Seattle/Tacoma) were unreliable as someone would come along every few weeks and cut off the charging cables for the copper, and it would then take more weeks for them to be repaired. The infrastructure was simply too unstable, but it did only cost me $300 in electricity for the entire year previously that I owned it.
I live in an apartment as well and my area has really good transportation. We don't commute to work with the car. There are various reasons why we did car-sharing nonetheless.
In the end our family decided to buy a car. We got an EV. Our use is sporadic and one could argue that if money was our priority, buying the car was a mistake.
So in this situation, having an EV is fine. The only downside that I found is that I spend a bit too much money on McDonald's. This is because the cheapest chargers are next McDonald's where I live. But it's not a problem, just a funny hiccup.
File under: headlines that should have appeared 10 years ago.
Given that the Prius made it's first appearance in 1997.
I disagree. Toyota is one of the only companies that didn't plunge into EVs and get completely destroyed. Instead, they've stayed on the hybrid train, which has turned out to be a highlight for ICE cars.
Too early to say. they seem to be getting their rest if world market eaten by BYD etc. but it will take some years to play out
I was surprised to read the headline because this is going in a different direction than most car companies. For example, VW, Ford, GM, and others have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago. They discovered that most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them, and the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
Then I read the key quote and realized that Toyota isn't transforming the Corolla into an electric vehicle. They're simply going to offer an electric option. That's much less of an interesting headline, which explains why it wasn't chosen.
> “Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source―let’s make good-looking cars that everyone will want to drive!” Toyota’s CEO said at the Japan Mobility Show.
> For example, VW, Ford, GM, and others have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago. They discovered that most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them, and the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
I don't think that's a fair assessment of the EV market, which continues to grow, albeit slowly, in the US and much faster elsewhere. At best it is constrained to the US car market where the government has been yanking incentives, tariffs, and emissions requirements back and forth recently, providing an unstable market for manufacturers to invest in.
Some brands put together EV models that were inherently unprofitable, and hoped that incentives and scale would save them, mainly Ford. Ford is currently investing a lot into building their next-gen EV platforms which should be both more affordable and profitable. GM has not cancelled any EV models that I'm aware of, except the Bolt which is planned to be replaced by a new affordable EV model in a similar market slot.
VW is introducing a lot of new EV models in Europe and other markets, but not so much in the US where policy has us a less favorable market for them.
Toyota + Subaru have introduced multiple refreshed or brand new EV-only models over the last year including in the US.
And of course China is going crazy for EVs with many competing domestic manufacturers, a full battery supply chain, and many affordable models to pick from.
Meanwhile, batteries keep getting better and cheaper, in most places the charging networks are growing, and charging is getting faster.
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The US big 3 and VW canceled several EV product lines because the government policy flipped from subsidizing them to subsidizing ICE production. With the Iran war, the economics has shifted again and some of the products they canceled could have been made profitable, but it's too late for most of them now. This actually creates an opening for Rivian's downmarket R2 line expansion.
Meanwhile the Chinese companies are disrupting the overseas market for all of them (which is why Toyota is fretting). Many don't realize the disruptive potential of China's battery, EV, and solar panel supply chain combined with the oil shock - many subtropical countries are on the verge of flipping their economies to be linked to China's because of this. The long term consequences for American and European manufacturing supply chains will be major - not just in terms of present but future orders, since many of those countries are continuing to grow their consumer base faster than US/EU.
How are they subsidizing ICE production over EVs? Or is it just that the subsidies are easier to get if you don't need to include rare earth elements, which EVs require, in your inventory?
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> let’s make good-looking cars that everyone will want to drive!
This is a very unfortunate goal for Toyota specifically to have. I am extremely loyal to driving late 90s/early 2000s toyotas (I have owned at various points a 1997 corolla, a 1999 camry, and a 2000 tundra, and my daily driver today is such a car as well), due to them being extremely cost effective and also extremely reliable. A well-maintained, or even moderately maintained, late 90s/early 2000s Toyota car is, in my experience, almost as reliable as a new car that costs 4x+ the price, and it has the benefit of much less DRM, spyware, and other software bullshit, as well as being much easier to repair. I am also unaware of any modern car that is remotely like this, as well as unaware of any electric car that is remotely like this, except maybe Slate (though this is not available yet, so I am withholding judgement until I can see 3rd party reviews and maybe try one).
But, to summarize, I really like some of Toyota's old work for intensely practical reasons, and I think that this is a gap in the market of cars manufactured today (someone please tell me I am wrong by pointing to a good option on these criteria, preferably an EV!), and I couldn't give a rat's ass about the car being "good-looking", so it's unfortunate (though not surprising) that Toyota is deeming that their goal.
Toyota, like many companies that succeed based on merits beyond the aesthetic, secretly dreams of being an aesthetics-first company like, say, Porche or Ferrari, and always tries their hardest to reject reality so that they can do the sexy-but-awful thing instead of the amazing-but-ugly thing.
You see this recently over the last couple years in tech where everyone is "an AI company" even when they make something totally unrelated - same impulse, different industry.
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Yep, the only thing I love about newer cars are dynamic cruise/lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring, and memory seats. Cars from 20 years ago had better controls and were likely cheaper to repair in most cases.
Main car of anime Initial-D is a Toyota. They revived it a while back. So they are doing that kind of aesthetic.
> For example, VW, … have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago
> most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them
You should really reconsider where you get your information from.
“Volkswagen reported more than 70,000 orders for its new Electric Urban Car Family within just a few weeks, while European BEV orders increased by more than 50% in Q2.”
https://www.volkswagen-group.com/en/half-yearly-financial-re...
America, where they are pulling models. I have PHEVs and enjoy them, but I am aware that many people are not going to buy EVs with their current specs. Either they live somewhere cold, where range will fluctuate and not be sufficient at times of the year, or they live somewhere that has power outages frequently enough (or at times of emergency) that they do not consider pure EVs. This is especially true for people with only one car. Families that have multiple cars are obviously more open to having one car that's an EV.
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Various OEMs have sort of soft-exited the US EV market, but that doesn't mean they're not offering the cars or stop development of them in other markets.
It just means the US market is too unattractive and low-volume for EVs that aren't a Tesla.
Today there isn't really a price premium for electric cars. With Gas prices being what they are the demand is naturally increasing.
Even with normal Gas prices EVs are cheaper
You are forgetting the elephant in the room: the charger at home and all the implications that brings in between costs and actual possibility of installation at all.
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> the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
Would love a Toyota EV but usually for significantly less I can get a Toyota hybrid with more space. Both my partner's and my vehicles are Toyota hybrid crossovers but we looked for an EV first and realized we simply couldn't justify the extreme price difference for how little our cars are driven. Really hoping when our time for a new vehicle comes we can trade in both for one reasonably priced EV crossover - so hopefully the rest of the planet can continue pushing the EV market forward while the US lags way behind.
Yeah Toyota's PHEVs are quite nice, but the price premium is too much. It basically makes no sense unless you can charge for free at work, and even then you'd have to drive 50,000 miles before it pays off. If you're like most of us and you pay for electricity at home, the inflection point is even further out. How many people even keep cars for that long anymore?
I think the problem is not that people don't want electric cars. The problem is that people don't have a place to plug the car at home.
I think the US is still pretty far from saturating the potential market of garage-owning car buyers with EVs, but that is a major hurdle for people who rent or street park and might be interested in saving gas money.
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I'm not sure why you got downvoted as I think you are mostly correct.
We've had an EV for 1.5 years and love it. In fact any time I'm in a gas-powered car it feels downright primitive with all the noises and smells and sluggish performance. The range anxiety we experienced at first has completely given way to it being awesome that I never have to stop at gas stations and don't have to waste time/money on oil changes.
But if we couldn't charge at home it would likely be more expensive to fuel than a gas car instead of being much cheaper (but this depends on your local electricity and gas prices).
However, I do think there is still a big pool in the US who haven't even ridden in one to know what they are missing. Americans have never let poor gas mileage stop them from buying a car (or truck) that is bigger or faster or somehow "better" than the economical choice.
I don’t know about the others but Ford isn’t axing it’s EVs, it’s reworking them to make them cheaper.
It axed the F150 Lightning. They might have later announced that they're going to bring it back as an EREV (pretty much PHEV), but that seemed like a separate decision. If it were the same decision, they would have announced it at the time of the cancellation announcement, to make it seem more like a pivot.
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Historically most of these "Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source" platforms have been utter ICE-first EV-distant-fourth-priority shit shows. Most of the exceptions are rather expensive.
True, and it's especially interesting since Toyota I think offers some vehicles only as hybrids/PHEVs. For example, the Camry and RAV4 fall into this category, I think. It's deceptive because it makes it look like the RAV4 PHEV isn't that much more than the base model. But since the base model is already more expensive than an ICE would have been because it's a hybrid, this isn't the true differential between ICE and PHEV.
In general, they've been pretty uninspired. That said, the Hyundai Kona/Kia Niro cousins were pretty much just "replace the engine with a motor and bolt the battery to the bottom" and those were perfectly reasonable cars for the vast majority of actual needs.
Toyota has been very slow on the EV front, and it turns out that was a stroke of luck - demand has cooled off for EVs massively. (especially after the tax credits were killed in the US)
They make some of the best hybrids in existence. Their transmissions, due to being just a planetary gearbox, are essentially unbreakable and require no real maintenance. They're also very, very gas efficient.
It makes sense to keep doing what they know, when they do it well and the US lacks a lot of good EV infrastructure. (Not even fast charging stations, just like simple slow chargers around businesses and parking)
I regret going for a '23 Corolla gas instead of the hybrid, but at the time I was short on cash and didn't know as much about hybrids as I do now. In my mind it was more complicated and failure prone, which isn't the case.
> it turns out that was a stroke of luck
> demand has cooled off for EVs massively.
Or, maybe they just accurately realized that US consumers don't want EVs.
The lesson I take away from Tesla is going for the extremum: if you're going to be BEV, don't compromise. Toyota is ignoring that with a "platform that supports all powertrains, including pure electric".
Tesla doesnt have offering in 30k market, which is likely different story, design and component sharing is important to cut cost. Also, Teslas are premium segment, thus can afford to go extreme.
You can buy the Model 3 for $37k, which is not far off $30k, and definitely not in the premium segment.
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> With over 57 million sold worldwide since it went on sale in 1966, the Toyota Corolla is widely considered the best-selling vehicle to date.
Is it or is it not the best-selling vehicle to date? Should be pretty simple to determine.
It's not. The Honda Super Cub is the top selling motor vehicle in the world, with 60 million produced in 2008 alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Super_Cub
You're wrong. The best-selling vehicle is the Flying Pigeon bicycle, the standard bicycle from Mao-era China with more than 500 million produced since 1950.
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Depends on what counts in that 57 million. Just the base Corolla, or also the Corolla Verso that was actually based on the Avensis platform? What about the Toyota Auris? Toyota Conquest? Holden Nova? Geo Prizm?
I wonder if you combine the numbers of the VW Golf, Rabbit, Bora, Jetta, Corrado and Scirocco if it beats that 57 million.
The main question is whether to count the Corolla at all, given that it's changed so much over the years. The original VW Beetle at ~21M and minimally changed from 1938 to 2003 has a strong claim.
Toyota wants to show nobody wants EVs by making EVs nobody wants.
I'd take a hard look at an electric Corolla if it's not much more expensive than the gas version
Me too. Not for me, but for my kids. The idea of a dead nuts reliable Toyota EV is appealing. They're not going to blow your socks off with performance or tech, but combining Toyota manufacturing prowess with the inherent superior reliability of EVs could make for one hell of a long term ownership experience.
Am I the only one who thinks those look damned cool? If they provided some kind of stupid engine option to definitively hoon the thing, I’d be all over it.
To be clear, exterior design only. The interior looks stupid. The seats look deadly to me at 50 with back problems.
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Its unfortunate that basically zero companies are working on generator only ICE engines with small packaging for range extended EVs.
This does exist, the Maextro S800 is one example. Over 800 mi with the gas extender. For trucks there's the Ram 1500 Ramcharger, and Mahle makes a drop in attachment for EV truckers.
I think for most consumers though, if you want that range I wouldn't go EV. At the point where you're adding extra weight via engine + gasoline you're giving up range, and we've already figured out what the most efficient gas vs battery tradeoff is in hybrids. Like the Hybrid Camry with 600 mi of range is insane, if it had a bigger battery (with current tech) you'd just be losing range from the additional weight
My thoughts exactly! Get the benefits of the electric powertrain (no gearing, instant torque), with the proven range-extension of the ICE generator.
This has been tried a bunch of times.
honda prelude is almost this
Byd is
The hybrid already gets 55mpg and the batteries are dirt cheap.
Its actually cheaper (for me in the UK) to run a corolla hybrid than an EV as I don't have the ability to charge at home.
I really did think Toyota would have a nice market if they stuck to hybrids.
Our 2026 hybrid gets 64mpg in Albuquerque. The last time I did the EROI calculation it beat everything by a long shot.
Corolla is sort of highly underrated engineering marvel.
Not sure how you got one that gets 55mpg, mine gets 44 (47 was on the sticker). But in CA this still beats 100% EV.
You really do have to do the math using your local costs. I'm in a place with slightly cheaper gas but much cheaper electricity than California. Combined with cheap night time electricity I'm paying under $0.03 per mile for a large EV. I would need 150 mpg vehicle (assuming $4.50 gas) to beat that. However I'm cheating a bit - I'm on a plan which raises my day time electric costs a small amount in exchange for half-price at night, so they're getting some of that back, and I should amortize charger and electrician work ($1600 for me).
Yeesh. I get 44 mpg in a much heavier Toyota hybrid. But it probably depends on what percentage of your driving is in the city, vs highway.
What's the math on that? Average kWh in California is around 18 cents. Assuming 0.35 kWh per mile, that's 6.3 cents per mile. You'd need to get 100mpg+ to beat an EV at current gas prices. A brand new Corolla hybrid my family recently bought gets around 40-60 mpg driving around a small city. And that's without factoring in maintenance differences costs per mile.
55mpg is nothing. I get 100+ mpg equivalent on my massive F-150 lightning and if you include cost in the comparison it’s probably a couple of multipliers more than that.
And that's just operating cost. PHEVs have a higher maintenance cost and worse reliability than pure EVs, typically. Certainly higher complexity and more parts.
On top of that, my Lightning was less expensive than the gas equivalent. I've been winning since day one. If I had to sell it today (that would make me so sad), the depreciation would be the lowest of any car I've ever owned.
Much better headline: Toyota is throwing every powertrain into the next Corolla
One neat thing about this announcement is we will finally have apples-to-apples ownership costs and reliability data.
The car is too low to the ground.
One of the things that really frustrated me about my Tesla Model 3 was how low it was. I would "look up" at Ford Fusions and other sedans on the road.
In contrast, my Model Y isn't an SUV. It's the height (and ground clearance) of what we used to call sedans, and really feels like a sedan instead of an SUV.
That's interesting, because a Model 3, BMW 3 series, Honda Accord, and Toyota Camry are all within like 10mm of each other in height, and very similar ground clearance as well (the lowest ground clearance is the Accord). The Model Y is like 7 inches taller, very much in the range of a typical comparable CUV.
Will the Corolla EV cost significantly more than a Corolla Hybrid, and does the efficiency gain justify the premium for the average buyer?
They say in the article:
"We will learn prices closer to launch, but according to Car and Driver, the gas version will likely start at around $25,000, the hybrid around $27,000, and the EV and PHEVs will likely be priced in the $30,000 range."
As far as prices go, that is not that bad for an EV. (These days)
Judging from the prototype Toyota is clearly not serious about actually producing this ev version.
That's right. Nobody wants EVs, and even if there is a niche demand, Chinese companies are dumping them at a national level. (look at the Europe plight)
They'll pretend to sell EVs to keep their options open, but they won't actually sell any.
> Nobody wants EVs
Tongue-in-cheek, or a persistent case of cope?
Why couldn't it just look like a Corolla
Finally, I would say, and I'm very happy they have not succumbed to the incredibly stupid fashion of making steering wheels square instead of rounded.
The interesting part isn’t really that Toyota is making an electric Corolla, it’s that they’re apparently trying to keep one platform flexible enough for ICE, hybrid, PHEV and BEV
I just want my subcompacts back... I was mortified to find that the whole class had been abandoned in current year models across manufacturers :(
Yup, we are being force-fed the large SUVs and the over-engineered computer-on-4-wheels.
Yeah, it's too bad there's no way to buy a car from the last few years. Maybe even a decades old vehicle! That'd be crazy!
Does this change the fact that they quit making subcompacts?
No thanks, Toyota. We'll keep running our 20 year old Corolla (9th generation - if you know, you know)
why don't Japanese auto-makers embrace the super+ hybrid that was embraced by Chinese auto makers. having electric motors and a small engine to constantly charge / drive the motors.
Japanese auto makers are already good at hybrid power trains, small engines.
surely extended range vehicles - 1000km+/700mi+ shouldn't be limited to Chinese brands only.
Part of that is that we are reaching the point where a plug-in hybrid is actually more expensive to produce than an EV.
Go to Toyota's website today and you'll see that a Rav4 Plug-in Hybrid is more expensive than the bZ which is the equivalent full EV.
Going to an EREV layout (a series plug-in hybrid where the gas engine cannot drive the wheels mechanically) doesn't really save any costs directly, but allows sharing the platform between EV and EREV models.
An EREV is basically the worst of almost all worlds. It's a BEV with a motor tacked on. It ends up with a battery not a lot smaller than a pure BEV, so no real reduction in the cost of an expensive component, plus an engine and generator along with associated maintenance headaches. Not to mention the almost certain loss of cargo capacity.
I can't see myself ever wanting a Lightning EREV, for example, because of this exact issue. If I needed to tow, that would be the sole situation where it might hold enough of an advantage to matter. Aside from that, it will have (most likely) about 75% of the battery the BEV Lightning has, and it will lose the frunk, which is one of my favorite features. Plus, unlike my Lightning with it's 200K mile first required maintenance work, the EREV will probably have to be serviced every 10-20K miles. Ugh.
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I think they have, though not as much as they should have.
I have a Sienna minivan that is hybrid and gets 36 MPG which is at least 10MPG more than everyone else using a beefed up version of the drivetrain the Prius created. (I can go 550-600 miles on a tank)
I also got RAV4 Prime which is a plugin electric that uses the same drivetrain tech and can go full electric, hybrid, or full power with both for over 300hp which is fun.
They achieve the best efficiency by using an Atkinson cycle engine which is more efficient but less powerful on the Sienna and Prius. What has confused me more is that things like the Grand Highlander still have a traditional cycle engine in their hybrid setup so you don't get the maximum advantage.
Range extender motors should have been easy to rent and much cheaper for long trips than a full car rental.
It would be very interesting to me to have a small sedan BEV with a rear charging port and an optional flat trailer with a large battery and room for luggage/furniture. The battery would be plugged into that car while driving. I'd want the trailer rentable from the dealer for occasional long trips. BEVs seem to have powerful motors, there must be something else with the economics why this isn't a thing.
Everyone wants to rent that trailer at the same time. That is Christmas break, spring break, and summer vacations. Most of the year it is going to sit unused and so you're going to have to buy your own trailer if you want one not rented because they're just not the economics of it. You'll be paying for it either way because you're going to be the only user.
RVs are where I would think this would make the most sense. People with a travel trailer already have a heavy trailer and they want a lot of battery to get it anyway. beef up the axle a little you can put a thousand pounds of battery on you get more range when you're towing and if there's any left over your RV can run on battery power. It's also very common for them to plug in once they get where they're going and so they can charge on 220 volt power that's already at the RV park and be charged and charge your car while you're at it overnight.
I noticed that they are selling RV trailers that help haul themselves, and now electric trailers for semis.
https://electrek.co/2026/03/26/lightship-electric-rv-trailer...
https://electrek.co/2025/06/30/pebble-begins-deliveries-elec...
https://electrek.co/2026/05/08/really-quick-charge-with-rang...
Didn't Toyota bet heavily on hybrid, only to realise that no one really wants them. You have to have a specific daily drive for them to make much sense. You're carrying two engines and to fuel/power sources, so mileage is terrible on gas and battery.
Hybrids make a lot of sense, they just have a lot of the same costs as building EVs and most buyers in the US weren't willing to pay an extra $5k to increase gas mileage by 15%.
Toyota is currently seeing record sales of their hybrid models and has made multiple models hybrid-only as costs have fallen.
Plug-in hybrids with larger battery packs are a harder market fit. They cost more because of the larger battery (often more than full EV equivalents) and are not saving you any extra money unless you can plug it in daily. If you have that extra money to spend and a place to plug an, an EV will probably work fine for you and save you more money over time.
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"only to realise that no one really wants them" - 1 of every 6 new cars sold in the US are hybrids
"You have to have a specific daily drive for them to make much sense" - You'd have to have an extremely specific commute for an ICE car to potentially beat a hybrid (flat highway driving with zero traffic). Even then it's doubtful as hybrid engines can be designed to optimize more for efficiency since the electric torque can augment to make performance acceptable. Try to find an ICE car that gets better EPA ratings than equivalent hybrids.
"You're carrying two engines and to fuel/power sources, so mileage is terrible on gas and battery." - The corolla hybrid LE weighs 100lbs less than the ICE LE, in part because hybrid transmissions are quite simple in comparison to a manual/automatic required in an ICE car. In either case, hybrids have a huge advantage in the types of driving where weight matters (stop-and-go/hills) because they can reclaim that energy rather than losing it as heat.
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Most hybrids Toyota sells have a ~1 kWh battery which cannot be charged externally.
>why don't Japanese auto-makers embrace the super+ hybrid that was embraced by Chinese auto makers
How is that different than plug-in hybrids that toyota already have?
In a pure series hybrid a gas engine acts a generator which charges a battery, which drives an electric motor, which provides power to the wheels.
In parallel hybrids, both the gas motor and the electric motor provide traction, sometimes simultaneously.
Parallel is more efficient if you're depending on gas often, as every conversion has losses. Toyota mostly sells hybrids you can't plug in, and the ones you can plug in are variants of the ones you can't, so they all share the same drivetrain.
As far as I know, such plug-in hybrids directly drive the car forward via the internal combustion engine, which is more efficient than using a (possibly smaller and simpler) engine to charge a battery which then moves the car via electric motors, which is what I understand the person that you're replying to to be describing, though I am not familiar with the specific Chinese cars in question, since those are not options available to me due to living in the United States.
Related, though not for plug-in hybrids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnUFH5GX_fI
Chevy had that with the Volt and while it has its fans, it wasn’t exactly a hit.
The volt was more like a Prius Plugin++. It still has a planetary gearset through which the engine would drive the wheels.
They have. See toyota hyryder
Yeah, what happened after the Toyota Prius?
What about this is a Corolla? It looks like something from Cyberpunk 2077.
Possibly dumb question: What makes this a "Corolla" as opposed to a new car that happens to have the same brand name?
Just give us a normal Corolla with a battery and keep the physical climate knobs and normal door handles. Not every EV needs to look like an iPad on wheels from a 2015 sci-fi concept.
If they would bring a barebones electric station wagon to the US that would be heavenly.
I wish anyone would. Sadly it seems you me and one other person I know are the sole market for station wagons in the modern world and so no one will.
Too late.
Us rusted on Toyota customers are moving to Chinese EVs
My family's last 6 cars were Toyota hybrids. But as a corporation, Toyota is notoriously anti-electric.
Tomorrow I am test driving a Xpeng G6, a Zeek X and a BYD Atto 3.
No more anti-electric Toyotas for me.
( And of course no cars from fascist countries like the USA, that goes without saying )
Can't wait for the day where Toyota is called "the BYD of ICE", as opposed to how it is now.
> "USA is fascist!"
> Exclusively buying vehicles from China
lol
I'm excited about this because this means that I'll easily be able to rent an electric car again from the big rental companies that I can rely on being everywhere. It's currently a massive PITA to do this since they've cut EV inventory across the board so renting an EV car is always a gamble.
Finally, after decades of denial.
I'm holding on to my gas vehicle as long as I can because I really don't like the hybrid sad spaceship noise. I guess I could get it and disable the speaker but then that might void the warranty. The mechanic I go to tells me I can absolutely disable it and they will do it for me but they caution that it will void a warranty. I will continue to drive my old car until it falls apart.
> that might void the warranty
That would be explicitly illegal, it will definitely not void your warranty. It could hypothetically increase your liability if you are involved in an accident where you run over a pedestrian who argues that you were silent when you should have been making noise, but I am not sure this has ever been litigated.
when you injure or kill someone disabled who didn't hear your car and the investigators find that you disabled the sound, you will do time, it's literally a law
tire noise at slow speed is not enough
but some cars do seem to have a good noise and some a bad noise
An electric Corolla makes sense to me. The big question is the price. If it ends up costing much more than the hybrid, it’s going to be a harder sell. Curious what the price gap will be.
> The Japanese automaker is planning a drastic overhaul, including a sleek new design, high-tech interior, and updated platform.
Oh please no! I loved the old boring interiors with analog components
I look forward to it looking absolutely nothing like these concepts
They have waited this long because Japan currently doesn't have the electricity to support a shift to a majority EV situation.
Explains the whole "pfft BEV sucks HEV rules" phase they were in for a while.
About time! The Corolla is the perfect mass-market platform for an EV, glad they're finally going all in.
What do you mean, the Corolla is a gas powered platform.
Those wheels are so far to the corner, I can’t see how the car drives after even a minor front corner hit.
> Toyota’s current chairman and former CEO, Akio Toyoda, warned [...] in July that the company is being forced to adapt, or “it cannot survive,”.
THIS is why I hate legacy auto companies. They don't want to delight customers. They must be dragged and forced to offer the bare minimum.
I have a Hyundai EV and it's the best vehicle I've ever driven. Japan and Detroit (et al) can suck it.
What's your definition of "legacy auto company"? Wikipedia tells me Hyundai was founded in 1967.
I'm suggesting they self-identify by resisting changes customers want.
Detroit fought against safety features until it was forced on them and Volvo led the way. They continued to fight against infotainment, offering horrible in-house trash, until Tesla shamed them with something from this century. All the Japanese makers fought against the EV wave by putting up a fake signal with H2, which they knew would never fly, which let them continue without retooling.
Now, BYD shames them all with scores of features at a reasonable price. If it weren't for protectionism, they'd be wiping up western markets. And to your point, yes Hyundai is old but they're listening to demand and responding by delighting customers.
I want an electric Supra.
Nobody's making good lightweight superfast electric sportscars except for Kia (EV6 GT, 600hp). That car is amazing but the interior is super-cheap and Kia failed to "do the Acura thing" that made the NSX respectable (it isn't a "Honda NSX").
The Porsche Taycan is an absolute boat, an old man's car, the thing weighs a ton. Handling is terrible, center of mass is way above the axles. BMW electrics are the same. Mercedes doesn't even have an electric performance car. The German car companies are really just "mailing it in" when it comes to electic sportscars; they refuse to actually try to build a good one.
Tesla Model S isn't much better and is discontinued.
Other than the $250k+ upcoming roadster and the $60k EV6 GT (cheap cloth seats, no leather option, Kia badge) there's really nothing out there that handles well. Pretty huge gap in the market there.
I want an electric convertible Corvette C8.
Sadly, I might have to settle for the Porsche 718. Polestar 6 got me excited, but that project is basically dead, especially with Polestar being effectively banned starting with model year 2027. If the US government got its head out of its ass regarding Chinese cars, I'd REALLY like a BYD Denza Z Spider.
The sad thing is, the Venn Diagram of EV enthusiasts and sports car enthusiasts is almost two separate circles.
That Venn diagram will collapse to the same thing very quickly once someone actually brings out a good electric sports car. Electric has significant advantages in acceleration. As soon as you can use an electric car on a race track, people will discover they're blowing away their competition. On the track we are talking about the difference between your losses during shifts and the full torque right off the line, which is maybe only a second per lap, but a second would be shatteringly huge in a race.
Of course a lot of race rules are very strict and an electric car wouldn't qualify and also most electric cars don't have enough power to show this off but the potential is right there.
I think the batteries just aren't there yet. You need light for a sports car and current gen battery tech (~0.3KW/Kg vs 10+ for petrol) just suck in this use case (and I say that as, generally, an EV supporter). It'll improve but it'll take a while.
What about the Model 3 Performance? It accelerates faster than the EV6 GT, has more range, and is several hundred pounds lighter. Cornering ability seems to be similar, as both get 0.92g in skid pad tests.
Tesla suspension.
Hard pass.
Hyundai’s Ioniq 6 N is a sister to the EV6 GT with a better interior and a little more of a Supra vibe
If you can live with two seats, Porsche seems to have finally greenlighted production of the electric Boxster/Cayman. I believe that platform will be shared with Audi to make a lower-cost offering available.
Yeah I've heard, but this is like the fourth or fifth "greenlight rumor". There were several "electric 911" rumors that fell flat.
I would prefer a two-door two-seater.
If they actually build the damn thing I will certainly try it and probably buy one. But I'm not getting my hopes up.
The EV6 GT is a 1550mm tall crossover SUV-coupe weighing almost 4900 lbs with 577 hp, but is more of a young man's sports car than a 1380mm tall sedan weighing 100 lbs more but approaching twice the power? Seems sensible.
You clearly haven't driven both.
Who cares if the roof is higher off the ground? The EV6's center of mass is much lower than the Porsche's.
The EV6 GT suspension is vastly superior, and it's active electronic; the Taycan just toggles between two settings ("normal" and "high-clearance" for going over speed bumps).
The EV6 GT's rear differential has electronic control; you can feel it when you take freeway turns at >80mph -- your brain tells you "the rear wheels should be fishtailing"... but they just don't. It's crazy. I think they actually factor in the steering wheel position, something you can't do with a simple mechanical differential. I've never felt anything like that in any other car.
But it still has the Kia badge. And the cheap interior. It's a shame; they could've used this car to launch an "Acura"-like brand with the EV6 GT as their NSX.
Still, Porsche should be embarrassed of the Taycan. That car is a joke.
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> Toyota’s current chairman and former CEO, Akio Toyoda, warned in an exclusive interview with Japanese media NHK in July that the company is being forced to adapt, or “it cannot survive,” amid new competition and technology from China.
Finally run out of lobbying options, eh? Good luck with that.
Been waiting for this and a plug-in hybrid Corolla with at least 50 mile electric range. Would be a game changer.
Are the indicators visible from two cars back? IAre the reverse lights bigger than 1"*2", and can they be seen on a sunny day?
I do the same thing in London.
London is beautiful!
I really don’t think the legacy Japanese or the American auto makers get it. People don’t want goofy offshot designs for their EV’s. They want regular ass looking cars.
I’ve got a Corolla hybrid. Fantastic car— great basic utility, reasonable comfort, zero sporting pretension and an honest high 50s mpg.
If you consider one, be sure to get blind spot detection in the mirrors. I didn’t, it is the worst car I’ve ever had for blind spots.
Too little too late. I bought a BYD Atto 2 this month and it's great.
My statements up till now were "yeah I'll get an EV when Toyota makes one" except here we are.
It is unbelievable how badly Toyota has fumbled the EV market.
This is a terrible decision.
I really hope the interior doesn't look like what the concept seems to show, with a bunch of functionality relegated to screens. Screens are terrible UI for cars.
“Surprise Tesler I just bought a new Corolla wagon!” “D’oh!”
Is the BEV version really that much more expensive just because of the battery? It costs that much more than an engine?
Is it that hard? Take a normal car, take engine out, put electric motor in. Don't fuck around with the inside.
Engine is not the problem, but the battery and volume + weight it brings. Easily +200-400 kg to the weight of the car.
Based on pretty much every electric car out there, yes. They have to change everything.
They can keep the buttons and the normal interiors instead of making them look like something out of Star Trek.
5 minutes charging? No Solid State? No Swapping? No Hydrogen? No
Doa ? Yes
Why won’t they put the rav4 hybrid engine the Tacoma and sell it to me?
Just another ugly car. These days they all look like angry vacuum cleaners.
I love the aggressive design which is a stark contrast to the quirky toy designs that plagued EVs early on.
can we get a car that doesn't self-drive or phone-home?
just replace all the gas burning, oil dripping parts
electric cars also produce way less brake dust particulates, so it's a win all around
just stop trying to make a car a smartphone
At this point I’d pay a significant premium to the dealership and brand that will:
- A. make me an accessor to any datasets (and derivative reports that include my data if you want an extra poisonous pill) that include my data as a full dump and access log of my records and ‘admin’ activities.
- B. Tear out the telemetry hardware, or let me send it to my own endpoint. No satellite access needed. No thanks, driver cam. Who needs LoJack when we have Flock?
- C. Sell a car that’s built to be owned and operated by a human, not an auto brand. If they want to subscribe to some sort of remote assistance subscription, that would be an aftermarket 3rd party device. Open software and hardware within safety protocols increase the value proposition significantly. I would think this is the lowest TCO option, with standard, locally milled parts.
One can dream, right?
I think that's what Edison Motors is doing but only for trucks? I don't know how they're getting on now. Maybe they already failed.
You could be the first to make one. I've only heard of Edison because of their social media (so maybe a scam) - but they were showing off how they just bought a random truck and replaced the engine as a prototype
i'm actually of the opposite camp...sort of.
I want a dead simple car with the Waymo Driver installed and integrated.
My current car is a 2026 Model Y, but between public transit, Waymo being available in my town, and, soon, me taking possession of a top-of-the-line Brompton electric folding bike, I hardly drive the thing.
When I do drive it, however, I want it to drive itself, since I'm probably driving because I am either (a) going on a road trip that is made more fun by the car driving itself, or (b) am going somewhere that I have to drive to and am wishing the entire time that I wasn't.
>electric cars also produce way less brake dust particulates
Depends. Compared to a competent driver in a manual transmission, I doubt it. Manual transmission cars can brake with the engine instead of brakes. You also may be on the order of 1-2000+lbs lighter.
Then there's tire dust particulate considerations with the heavier EV with all that torque.
From what I've read, EVs mostly break with the engine, and recover quite some of the energy that way. To the point that I've read warnings about the breaks rusting here in south Sweden, and that you need to do some aggressive breaking now and then to clean them out.
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You do know that regen braking is a thing, right? The friction brakes on an EV are basically never applied except in emergencies or at speeds under 10 mph.
EVs end up with unique brake problems because they get used so little.
> Then there's tire dust particulate considerations with the heavier EV with all that torque.
This part is slightly true. EVs are heavier and will wear out tires faster, and if you actually use the extra torque, that'll contribute.
Like the Slate truck, to bad it's impressively expensive for a bare bones car.
https://www.slate.auto/en
Except for the tire and road wear. The extra weight isn't free.
Great! Now what's Honda waiting for?
They cancelled and destroyed their 0 Series EV line when it was basically two days away from starting deliveries and now they have absolutely nothing to show for it.
They are so unbelievably fucked. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually pull out of the car manufacturing game and exclusively stick to motorcycles.
Corolla is supposed to be the cheap one. But this concept looks way too flashy and the prices seem quite "meh" for affordability.
What a missed opportunity.
Maybe, some day, eventually, many years into the future.
/shrug.
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Any design of a future car with manual controls is already obsolete or admitting they have no autonomy stack.
Given Toyota's history on EV execution and their chairman who likes to wear the red hat clown costume and parade around and support the Jan 6th insurrection, I'm not waiting around for this mediocre junk to come out. D- for the effort.
They will absolutely make this EV extremely mediocre and then tell the world that nobody wants EVs. Sub 50kW charging, limited to only a few times a day, terrible range, terrible interiors that still don't support iOS/Android screens.
It's not even confirmed for the US.