Automotive News - October 21, 2019 - 31

OCTOBER 21, 2019 * 31

How Toyota will make its new EVs

Hans Greimel

hgreimel@crain.com

OKYO - To make its new portfolio
of electric vehicles less costly to create and more efficient to build, Toyota
Motor Corp. has created a dedicated
platform called e-TNGA - a play on the
name of the company's Toyota New Global
Architecture modular platform.
But it would have to be a flexible platform.
Toyota now wants a wide spectrum of EVs to
compete in the market.
"What I proposed was a platform idea like a
radio-controlled model car, where you have a
battery, motor and chassis that can be combined to produce different types of vehicles,"

TOYOTA

New unit aims to work
with speed of a startup

continued from Page 1

was a victory.
"He said, 'Spend two months and come back to
me with an idea,' " Toyoshima recounted of Toyoda's marching orders. "He said, 'Whether the
company gets larger or smaller is all up to you.' "
It was 2016, and Toyota was already late to
the global EV game. Today, Toyota's EV program hardly looks any bigger - at least from
the outside. It doesn't have a pure battery EV
on sale anywhere in the world.
But that's about to change in a big way.
Toyota has been quietly at work for three
years, methodically engineering not merely an
electric car, but a comprehensive plan to catch
up and become competitive. Now Toyota,
buoyed by its $10 billion r&d war chest, is
poised to put the plan into action and make up
for lost time.
"There is no turning back," said Toyota's
global design chief, Simon Humphries, who
was tasked with creating a styling language
for the company's debut lineup of full EVs.
The first fruits arrive next year with EVs for
China and Japan. Those will lead off a full
family of EVs and mobility spinoffs that Toyoshima and Humphries have in the works.
But there is more to the plan.
Toyota's gambit also entails a new way of
making cars. The company has devised a
more efficient development process, exclusively for EVs. It fully leverages the scale and
expertise of the entire Toyota Group of affiliated companies, from Subaru, Suzuki and Daihatsu to its family technology suppliers Denso
and Aisin Seiki. And the battle plan focuses on
next-generation technologies, such as solid-state batteries, and a new interchangeable
vehicle platform for a great leap forward.
"Toyota never does anything halfway, and
now they are finally moving at full force," said
Christopher Richter, senior auto analyst at
CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.

In the spotlight
Toyota intends to spotlight its EV ambitions
at this week's Tokyo Motor Show. On display
will be an autonomous electric people mover
called the e-Palette, the LQ electric pod car, additional EV concepts and even a self-driving
battery that can recharge other cars on the go.
The products signal that Toyota wants to do
more than catch up - it wants to leapfrog rivals that had a significant lead, including General Motors, Volkswagen and newcomers from
Silicon Valley and China.
Toyota's newfound zeal embodies a spirit
that is sweeping Japan's auto industry as it
grapples with the once-in-a-century upheaval unleashed by an onslaught of new automotive technologies and competitors.
Electrification will be the clear theme at the
Tokyo show. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. will
show a four-motor electric crossover concept. Nissan Motor Co. will preview a battery-powered minicar. Honda Motor Co. will

project chief engineer Koji Toyoshima told
Automotive News. "The parts of the car are all
produced as modules."
Toyoshima divided the car into several
modules, for the front, center, rear, battery
and motor. The idea is to mix and match these
building blocks into different body types.
That approach will support rear-wheeldrive, front-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive
layouts, Toyoshima said. And the platform
can be scaled up or down to create small, medium and large vehicles.
The center module controls the size. It can be
expanded to accommodate bigger batteries.
Those batteries will range from 50 kilowatt-hours to 100 kWh, Toyoshima said. They

Elements of Toyota's
EV design language
Grille-less front with slits for motor

ventilation

Prominent front corners where

sensors are embedded
Slimmed-down, razorlike headlights

Smaller hoods covering the compact

motor compartment
Flat floors accommodated by battery

layout
Bigger wheels enabled by less bulky

motor
Smaller, more minimalist and more

digital instrument panels

A world of competition

Toyota will face competition from
more than 100 electric vehicles that
are in development for debuts over
the next decade. Here is a rundown
of its main rivals.
BMW: Targeting 25 electric and hybrid
models by 2023, with over half being
fully electric
Ford: Investing $11.5 billion to
electrify vehicles by 2022, including
16 fully electric models worldwide by
then
GM: Spending $8 billion to develop
electric and self-driving vehicles,
including 20 new EVs globally by
2023
Honda: Striving for 15% of global
sales to be EVs by 2030, up from just
7% for EVs and hybrids in 2018
Hyundai Group: Releasing 23
battery-electrics across the Hyundai,
Kia and Genesis brands by 2025
Mercedes: Introducing a family of 10
full electrics under the EQ subbrand
by 2025
Nissan: Eyeing the launch of 8 new
EVs and annual sales of 1 million
electrified vehicles by 2022
VW Group: Planning 70 EV models
across its brands, from Audi to VW,
for global EV sales of 22 million by
2028

unveil a redesigned Fit small car with a new
two-motor hybrid powertrain. And Mazda
Motor Corp., long a champion of internal
combustion engine expertise, will show its
first mass-production EV.

Toyota's reset
Toyota's entry into EVs was part of a wider
reset.
Toyoda wanted to imbue the new division
with the speed and creativity of a startup.
That meant setting up a structure outside
Toyota's traditional byzantine bureaucracy.
And that took time.
But the result was the creation of a leaner,
flatter and faster development process.
Toyoshima's engineering side started with

will be mated to two types of motors, small or
medium. Motor output will range from 80 to
150 kilowatts.
Small EVs should achieve a fully charged
driving range of 186 miles, Toyoshima said.
For larger vehicles, such as an envisioned
crossover, the range could reach 310 to 372
miles, Toyoshima said.
Initially, Toyota's EVs will run on lithium
ion batteries. But Toyota is also banking on a
breakthrough in solid-state batteries. That
technology promises lighter, more powerful
and safer batteries and could spur demand
for the EVs by giving them greater range.
Toyota intends to show evidence of its progress in solid-state batteries next summer. m
four people, and even today as products
move through development, it still has just
350. Fewer than half of them - 150 - came
from within Toyota Motor; the rest came from
its partner companies.
The unit is called the ZEV Factory, short for
zero-emission vehicle, and its engineers work
in a building on the grounds of Toyota's Motomachi assembly plant instead of in the automaker's bustling tech center. Toyoshima,
the ZEV Factory's general manager, surveys
the premises from a standing desk he says is
designed to promote "discussion, rather than
just reporting to your superiors."
Meetings are rare and key business decisions are made quickly, requiring just three
hanko signoff stamps - one from the project
leader and one each from Toyoshima and Executive Vice President Shigeki Terashi, the
global r&d chief.
That's a radical departure for Toyota, a company accustomed to bureaucratic reviews.
The normal decision-making process for big
questions requires 10 signoffs, including one
from Toyoda himself.
On Humphries' design side, Toyota carved
out a self-contained studio for the EV team at
a dealer training facility outside Toyota City.
Some 20 stylists, computer designers and
modelers share a room with four clay model
milling machines and have enough space for
three simultaneous projects.
The setups are intended not just to speed
up development, but to give engineers and
designers extra latitude and opportunity to
let their imaginations flow.
"Time is absolutely critical," Humphries
said during a recent tour of the new studio.
"The last thing you want to do is to bring out
something that's out of date with the market.
We are gaining more time for creativity. That's
the most important thing."

The vehicles
Planners spent three years of incubation
envisioning a full lineup of vehicles, not just a
single model. One common criticism of Toyota's competitor Nissan is that it made a global splash as an early mover in EVs, introducing its electric Leaf in 2010 - but it has yet to
put another major EV onto the market.
"Toyota learned from the mistakes of others," said Richter, the CLSA analyst. "They let
others take risks when there wasn't even a
commercial reason to be in the EV business."
Toyota's commercial push begins next year
with an electrified version of the C-HR subcompact crossover for China and a new twoseat minicar for Japan with a range of 62
miles. But Toyota has designs for at least six
variants based on a newly created EV platform. There will be a large SUV, a medium
SUV, a medium crossover, a medium minivan, a medium sedan and a compact car.
In addition, Toyota intends to introduce a
plethora of battery-powered runabouts: a
boxy mini EV for commercial use, a seated-type scooter, a standing-type scooter and
a wheelchair link that connects to manual
wheelchairs and pulls them along with an
electric motor. Those plans are on top of the
LQ pod car and e-Palette, both of which are

Under the hood of
Toyota's upcoming EVs
Platform: e-TNGA, broken into modules
for front, center, rear, battery and motor
Layout: Fwd, rwd, awd
Battery: Lithium ion, from 50 to 100
kWh
Motor: 80- to 150-kW output per
motor; 1- and 2-motor configurations
possible
Range: 186 to 372 miles expected,
depending on battery size

expected to be on Tokyo streets when the city
hosts the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Humphries designed the full spread before
taking the plans to Toyoda in March. The designer said the broad portfolio approach was to
avoid focusing on a single EV model.
"Why so many were done together was to
say, if we had a group of EVs, this is the potential," Humphries said. "After seeing those
models, he was much more optimistic about
the future for EVs."
All told, Toyota plans to release 10 batterypowered vehicles worldwide by the early 2020s.

Profit down the road?
The devil in the details will be to convert
costly EVs into a profitable business. Toyota is
already the world's top seller of electrified vehicles, such as its Prius. But it took years before its trademark hybrid vehicles broke even.
Toyota's new gambit will rely on partnerships and new revenue streams.
"As a standalone business, electric vehicles
will probably never be profitable," Toyoshima
said. "There was a need to develop a group of
vehicles through comprehensive planning."
The goal was to spread costs by simultaneously developing six EVs, he said.
To minimize its own investment, Toyota invited participation from Subaru, Suzuki, Daihatsu
and some 20 suppliers. The size of their contributions, much of which came in the form of personnel, is based on how many EVs the group expects to eventually sell, Toyoshima said.
Toyota is also diversifying its partnerships
to include Chinese makers BYD Co. and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., in addition to Japanese player Panasonic Corp.
Toyota said in June that it aims to sell about
5.5 million electrified vehicles annually
around the world by 2025, five years ahead of
its original game plan. It expects pure EVs to
account for fewer than 1 million of those.
But by expanding its electrified offerings to
scooters, urban mobility and eventually
mass-transit concepts such as the e-Palette,
Toyota aims to create an EV ecosystem for
scale, reuse and recycling. The idea is to loop
in leasing, sharing, peripheral services and
used-vehicle sales.
Wringing extra revenue this way will be key,
said Koji Endo, a senior auto analyst with SBI
Securities Co. But managing rapidly plunging
resale values of EVs will be a huge challenge.
"It's one thing to come up with vehicles, but
the entire battery ecosystem is another," said
Endo, noting the trend toward ever cheaper
and better batteries. "It will be tough and
time consuming."
Toyoshima knows this is the biggest question mark. Toyota's brand image is intrinsically linked to its reputation for quality and
durability. An EV that loses half its value simply won't do.
The goal, he said, is a battery that keeps 90
percent of its range, and thus its value, after
10 years. Even with that, Toyoshima concedes, there is a long road to EV profitability.
"It will take at least 10 years," the 58-yearold engineering veteran said. "It probably
won't happen while I'm still working with the
company." m

Automotive News - October 21, 2019

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