Toyota came to the Shanghai International Motor Show this week with the objective of making a huge impact with the attending media and they succeeded when they unveiled their C-HR and IZOA models (Chinese C-HR built and sold in collaboration with the FAW) which will be available very soon to the global market as full BEVs – battery powered vehicles.
C-HR and IZOA will be the first electric vehicle to be launched in China under the Toyota brand. Sales of the new models are scheduled to start in 2020 and the right hand drive versions will be unveiled at this year ends Tokyo Motor Show.
Detailed information has not yet been announced, not even figures on their power outputs and performance figures as yet. From the available video and photos we can only find out that the car will have an electric motor mounted instead of the internal combustion engine and a battery pack that will be found both in the floor and under the rear seat.
From an aesthetic point of view, the electric C-HR will be distinguished from the best selling petrol version through new bumpers, the lack of a radiator grille and new aerodynamic rims. Inside, the changes are limited to the dashboard which now has become completely digital, but also a few changes to the gearlever surround and area.
Starting with this new C-HR model in China, Toyota plans to launch more than ten global electric cars by 2025 and will continue to do so in order to popularize electrified vehicles with the aim of globally selling over 2030 millions of such machines.
By the end of February this year, Toyota sold nearly 13,000,000 world-wide electrified vehicles since the initial launch of the Prius, a hybrid vehicle in 1997. This volume of cars is a reduction in global CO2 emissions with over 103,000,000 tons.
Is this Toyota Motor’s first full electric compact crossover? Will this Toyota electric drivetrain be shared with its other compact vehicles soon? These are the questions that we want answered very soon as the BEV segment is heating up and Toyota is a market leader in almost all countries it sells in.
