The electric vehicle market in India is going to have some new competition as Maruti Suzuki-Toyota is working on an electric SUV which is expected to offer a range of up to 500 km.

Both the companies are working together to bring out this electric vehicle for the International as well as the domestic market. While the automakers are working on this project together, their variants will have a distinct design and styling.

According to an AutoCar India report, the Maruti Suzuki variant is codenamed YY8 and is said to sport a futuristic design and might look totally different from the auto maker’s existing ICE-powered cars.

For those who are unaware, both Toyota and Suzuki had signed up an MoU (memorandum of understanding) in 2017 aimed at co-developing electric vehicles for the Indian market. According to this agreement, Suzuki will produce EVs for the Indian market and will supply some to Toyota. While Toyota is expected to provide technical support for the electric models.

The new vehicle will be designed from scratch unlike the previous tried and tested method of fitting the ICE vehicle with an electric powertrain. According to reports, YY8 will be a 4.2-meter-long vehicle. Reports also mention that the car might have a 2,700mm wheelbase. The benefit of such a long wheelbase is that the company will be able to fix a bigger battery which further translates into a higher range.

The SUV will feature both two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive variants. The two-wheel-drive variant is expected to be equipped with a 138hp motor and a 48kWh battery offering up to a 400 km of range in ideal conditions and the variant with four-wheel drive might come equipped with two-electric motors providing 170hp, a bigger 58 kWh battery, and up to 500 km range.

It is expected that the key features of Toyota’s e-SUV will remain the same but there will be a difference when it comes to the design of the vehicle. Moreover, the battery of this car is expected to be procured locally. According to reports, TDSG, a joint venture between Maruti-Suzuki, Denso, and Toshiba, is expected to manufacture these batteries in its Gujarat-based facility.

At the moment, it is not clear if Maruti Suzuki will introduce both variants in India, however, it is being reported that Toyota might launch both the two-wheel drive and the four-wheel-drive variants in India.

As it’s going to be Maruti’s first electric car in the Indian market the pricing will play a major role and the company will want to price it aggressively considering the Indian market scenario. According to reports, Maruti is expected to price this car in the range of Rs. 13-14 lakhs taking on the most popular Indian EV Tata Nexon.

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The idea of a manual transmission on an electric vehicle seems a far thought presently, as current EV models only come with automatic transmission. However, a recent patent filing by Japanese carmaker Toyota indicates that the company may be tinkering with the idea of a manual transmission for EVs.

According to a recent report by Teslarati, Toyota has made a raft of patent applications for a manual transmission to be used with electric vehicles. It is understood that the proposed Toyota system uses a pseudo-clutch pedal and pseudo-gear shift that will enable electric vehicles to transit to manual transmission whenever the driver desires.

There are lots of current EV users who may still be connected to their manual transmission internal combustion cars. For one thing, the engaging nature of manual transmission has made some drivers become die-hard fans of the manual transmission. However, it will take some dose of innovation to accomplish the Toyota model in an EV. The patent application shows a motor controller that models the output based on a traditional internal combustion vehicle. The mechanism of the operation of this component is at the heart of the development of what could be termed pseudo-manual transmission in electric vehicles.

Although the optics of the manual transmission mechanism are not very detailed at this time, it is bound to draw some manual transmission enthusiasts to such EVs when they become a reality. We just have to keep our fingers crossed to see whether Toyota will be putting their money into research and development of the manual transmission model for EVs.

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Japanese automaker Toyota is on course in its pursuit of churning out 30 electric vehicle models by the turn of this decade. The company is making massive investments in EV technology and is gradually transiting its production facilities to EV plants in pursuit of its goals. Toyota plans to spend up to $17 billion in developing its capacity in electric vehicle manufacturing.

Toyota is ramping up its efforts across several fronts and pursuing a robust production schedule that will see it delivering 15 EVs by 2025 (the initial target) and going further to release 15 more EVs by 2030. The target also includes the production of 3.5 million EVs by 2030 for its global market. The Toyota Lexus brand will be transformed into an all-electric lineup by 2035 as part of the broad goals of the Japanese automaker.

Toyota was among the early pacesetters in the shift towards electric vehicles, but it lagged significantly, allowing Tesla and others to dictate the pace and hold substantial market shares globally. Toyota now intends to roll back the clock and position itself for the future of sustainability-oriented vehicles with varying levels of autonomous driving. Toyota had long held the view that the shift towards electric vehicles as an alternative to traditional automobiles was overhyped. However, the official view of the company on EV technology has seemingly changed as the company now says that it is pursuing EV production to reduce tailpipe emissions from its gas-powered automobiles.

No details were released about the lineup and features that will be present in the models. Toyota will be doing catchup even with several traditional carmakers like Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen, and Mercedes-Benz among several others who had embraced EV production, with some having plans to transit to all-EV production within the next decade.

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Toyota is making you pay to use features that are on your car. The company is moving to a paid monthly subscription pack, which starts with you paying to use the remote car start feature from the key fobs.

The new subscription format is from the Japanese automobile maker’s new Connected Services (Via TheVerge). This would have the company offers its customers the option to buy one of these new services after buying a new Toyota car. The service includes Remote Connect, which lets users remotely start their cars directly from the key fob. In other words, we might be seeing a shift in the automobile industry as ‘smart features’ could new be offered under new monthly subscription plans.

At the moment, the company is offering free trials of Remote Control, although, the length of that trial depends on the audio package that is included with the vehicle. To make matters more complicated, only a few Toyota models currently support the Audio Plus or Premium Audio packages that lets you access the free trial. But regardless, we can confirm that the subscription model is official with $8/month or $80/year plans. Notably, Tesla also offers a similar subscription offering with its paid OTA (Over the Air) upgrades allowing users to activate certain features that are already built into the car, but are locked behind a paywall.

This includes paying to enable “Rear Heated Seats.” Although, Tesla usually takes a one time payment for these features rather than having you pay monthly. So while this might not be common with vehicles right now, the future of smart cars with paid DLCs (Downloadable Content) might not be far off. Meaning, one day you’ll be paying the car company every month for small smart features that are already built into your cars. With automobile giant Toyota adopting this business model, we can soon expect other brands to also launch similar models with their upcoming smart cars as well.

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Japanese automaker Toyota is collaborating with Chinese company BYD to build an electric vehicle that will be launched in 2022. The partnership between Toyota and BYD is seen as a move by the Japanese company to fast track its development of electric vehicle models in line with industry trends.

Toyota had pursued research on hybrid vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells in its future cars, but its progress has not been at par with the pace of evolution in the global EV market. Toyota presently has a few EV offerings in the market but the brand is miles away from the top and has a negligible market share in the fast-growing market.

It is understood that the Toyota-BYD partnership will see the release of a small and affordable electric sedan in China late next year, and the new electric car will come with a 200,000 yuan ($30,000) price tag. The partnership, according to Toyota, will see BYD providing the key technology that will yield a roomy car that is also affordable. It will be powered by BYD’s blade battery cells with the much improved LFP chemistry.

BYD is a fast-rising tech provider in the EV industry and its proprietary blade battery cells technology is attracting attention from the big hitters in the industry. The new Toyota-BYD electric car is rumored to be slightly bigger than the Toyota Corolla. There are still some key details that are still not available for the new Toyota electric car. It is unclear whether Toyota hopes to expand the availability of the car beyond China.

Both Toyota and BYD declined to comment on the news which emanated from inside sources.

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(via)

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