Japan’s Toyota will get a new BEV developed for it by the Indian arm of fellow Japanese OEM Suzuki. The new model is scheduled to be manufactured at Suzuki Motor Gujarat in India from the spring of 2025.
It will represent the first all-electric vehicle in a collaboration between the two firms that dates all the way back to 2016. It will target the global SUV market, the partners say. And the new model will also available with a 4WD system, aiming for customers interested in more off-road and performance capabilities.
The BEV platform on which the new vehicle — designed as exclusively all-electric — will be built has been jointly developed by Suzuki, Toyota, and the latter’s Daihatsu subsidiary. “By leveraging the BEV unit and platform that we jointly developed, we will take a new step in our collaboration in the field of electrified vehicles,” says Toyota president Koji Sato.
But the use of electrified vehicles might ring alarm bells that Toyota might remain keen to retreat into its preferred comfort zone of hybrids, even with a dedicated BEV platform — possibly similarly to the way in which conglomerate Stellantis plans to shoehorn ICEs onto hybrids and even gasoline/diesel vehicles on its new STLA architecture. Sato’s further comments do little to reassure that Toyota and its partners are committing fully to a dedicated BEV avenue here.
“This will allow us to deliver various choices that contribute to a carbon-neutral society to customers worldwide. We would like to learn from each other’s strengths, compete, and further joint efforts based on a multi-pathway approach,” he continues.
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Suzuki president Toshihiro Suzuki also makes reference to “the realisation of a carbon-neutral society through a multi-pathway approach”. In other words, Toyota and its Japanese OEM partners/competitors seem incapable of committing even to a BEV-only path among multiple paths, rather every path must be diluted.
This may lead to another dead end for Toyota, even if India — promising the potential for lower-cost manufacturing and a growing domestic market with a proven interest in BEV switching — seems at first glance like an advantageous location to start producing a new all-electric offering.
