Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, Oct. 24-Toyota is considering restarting its electric vehicle strategy to better compete in a booming market, Reuters reported. Toyota has been slow to enter the market and has stopped some work on existing electric vehicle projects, according to four people familiar with the still-developing plans.

If the new strategy is adopted, the proposals under review will revolutionize Toyota and rewrite the $38 billion electric car launch it announced last year to better compete with companies such as Tesla.

A working group within Toyota is responsible for outlining plans to improve its existing electric vehicle platform or new architecture by early next year, the four people said. At the same time, Toyota has suspended some of the 30 electric vehicle projects announced last December.

CTOnews.com learned that Toyota said it was committed to carbon neutrality in response to the news, but declined to comment on specific measures.

As part of the review, Toyota is considering launching the next generation of the pure electric platform for e-TNGA electric vehicles in 2019, which will enable Toyota to reduce costs, according to people familiar with the matter. The Toyota bZ4X, the first e-TNGA-based electric car that went on sale earlier this year, was affected by a recall, suspended production from June and resumed production earlier this month.

Sources said the review was partly due to the realisation by some Toyota engineers and executives that Toyota had lost to Tesla in the factory cost war for electric vehicles.

Toyota's original plan was to assume that demand for electric cars would not take off for decades, so it designed the e-TNGA to produce electric cars on the same assembly lines as gasoline and hybrids, the four people familiar with the matter said. But sales of electric vehicles are growing faster than Toyota expected and are expected to account for more than half of total car production by 2030.

Toyota is considering extending the usefulness of the e-TNGA by combining e-TNGA with new technology, even reviewing recommendations for faster phase-out of e-TNGA and choosing to design a dedicated EV platform from scratch, according to three people familiar with the matter. The new model could take about five years, according to two sources.

Toyota is working with suppliers and is considering reducing costs through factory innovation, such as Tesla's Giga Press, a large casting machine that simplifies work at the Tesla plant.

One area Toyota is reviewing is a more comprehensive approach to thermal management of electric vehicles, such as combining passenger air conditioning and electric power system temperature control, according to sources. This could allow Toyota to reduce the size and weight of electric car battery packs and reduce the cost of each car by thousands of dollars, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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