Toyota's ultra-small pure electric vehicle will be exhibited at the Tokyo Motor Show

Toyota Motors announced that it will sell ultra-compact pure electric vehicles in Japan in the winter of 2020, and the models are divided into a series, aiming at ultra-compact vehicles for daily short-distance transportation such as shopping in Japanese households. The car is about 2.5 meters long and 1.3 meters wide, with a maximum speed of 60 kilometers per hour and a range of 100 kilometers. It was exhibited at the Tokyo Motor Show.

It looks really square from the outside.

Although this car looks like a car for old men, Toyota also strives to meet the demands of young people in terms of screen and instrument display, and the overall layout is relatively simple.

The gear position is arranged in a button-like manner, and the driving mode can be adjusted

Toyota's short-distance travel is a series, as shown in the figure below:

For business use, the overall design specifications are similar, but the internal layout has been changed a lot.

The stand-up pure electric vehicle can accommodate one person and can travel about 14 kilometers on a single charge.

A pure electric vehicle that has been connected to a wheelchair for power assistance, with a range of 50 kilometers 

This type of product is very different from the electric cars that Toyota should bring out. This is how I see the demand in Japan. On the one hand, the main customers are the elderly, and the main focus is on limiting the use and speed of the vehicle, and continuing to reduce the difficulty of control; on the other hand, it is aimed at young people (housewives) and short-distance use.

For a family sedan like LEAF, there is a big sales difference between the corresponding Zengcheng hybrid in Japan, so Nissan's BEV technology is completely defeated by its own series hybrid, and the demand in the short term is relatively small.

In the past few years, Japanese companies have mainly studied these mini cars in their home country (this is the statistics of 2015). On this basis, Toyota put this car into mass production in 2020. Honda's cute car and subsequent mini cars are also aimed at replacing short-distance small cars.

In the field of autonomous driving, Toyota is also preparing to operate a fleet of 20 e-Palette shuttles during the Tokyo Olympics. Each vehicle can travel 150 kilometers after being fully charged (at low speeds and in special scenarios). This gradual operation and data accumulation process is also in line with the tradition of Japanese companies.

It is almost difficult for us to find any reference from Toyota's current series of operations.

Similar short-distance solutions, these days I helped Yanyan choose a means of transportation to send her child to cram school. Through low-cost solutions such as electric bicycles (lead-acid 1500-lithium battery 2500, smart 3500-5000), due to parking space, road rights, etc., the current usage mode in domestic cities is difficult to be changed by such four-wheeled micro-cars.

In rural and suburban areas, the game between low-speed vehicles and A00-level electric vehicles is still to be played out. In fact, in this market that is extremely particular about cost performance, it is difficult for ordinary automobile companies to control the cost. Since June, we have seen that SGMW and Chery New Energy are the only two companies that can still make a difference in the A00 level. In the next step, low-cost batteries based on lithium iron phosphate and LFP+LMO hybrid systems will be the mainstream. This approach is far from the competitive home pure electric vehicles we want.

Toyota and other Japanese automakers are replacing electric vehicles under the existing K CAR system. They have accumulated market share from previous efforts. With changes in supply, the market share will change accordingly. Since no new Japanese companies have entered this relatively low-threshold market, several automakers can slowly experiment. For us, the situation is different.

Summary: When promoting the pure electric technology route, we always face the consideration between reality and prospects. The companies that rush ahead and those that follow behind feel different pressures. I think the success of popular models and the direction of leadership are very important at the current stage. We look at the performance of Model 3=>Model Y, and also want to see the performance of several cars in the ID series, and the performance of BMW's INEXT series and Mercedes-Benz's EQ series. In fact, the industry especially needs to find the motivation for pure electric cars to impress consumers in the next few years.