Toyota introduced on Thursday that it plans to construct a brand new three-row battery-electric SUV in Princeton, Indiana, with a corresponding $1.4 billion funding within the plant.
The corporate emphasizes that this announcement comes along with the current $1.3 billion funding within the automaker’s Kentucky plant, to construct a separate three-row battery-electric SUV, beginning in 2025.
In different phrases, sure, Toyota may have two totally different three-row electrical SUVs. A report from earlier this month pegged a type of EVs as a absolutely electrical Toyota Highlander EV—with a possible Lexus TZ sibling. A Thursday report from Automotive Information means that with this automobile due for Indiana in 2026, the Kentucky plant’s EV due for manufacturing in 2025 is perhaps a Toyota bZ5X.
2023 Toyota bZ4X Restricted AWD
Reviews have advised that Toyota is having second ideas concerning the bZ nomenclature for EVs, and as such it’s unclear which of those two SUVs—the Highlander EV or bZ5X—could be the extra premium one, or how they may coexist.
The perfect trace of the latter automobile got here in Might 2023, when Toyota mentioned that its 2026 EVs could be constructed on three totally different platforms—a software program platform, an digital platform, and a physique and chassis platform. Toyota additionally mentioned then that it was fully rethinking the manufacturing course of for EVs. So it’s doable the Kentucky EV might symbolize all of those developments whereas, as Automotive Information factors out—seemingly agreeing with this alignment—the Indiana EV will probably be a “chassis-based” one sharing elements with gasoline fashions.
Toyota Land Cruiser Se idea
Toyota Land Cruiser Se idea
Toyota Land Cruiser Se idea
So the large Land Cruiser Se idea proven at Tokyo in October 2023 is perhaps pushed towards Kentucky manufacturing, with a considerably smaller Highlander EV to observe in Indiana.
In Might 2023, Toyota mentioned that it deliberate to launch 10 new EVs, starting from luxurious automobiles to compact vehicles and business automobiles, “primarily in america and China,” by 2026. That might assist Toyota attain what it referred to as a 1.5-million-EV “baseline” in 2026.
With Thursday’s announcement, the automaker may also add a brand new battery pack meeting to its $13.9 billion battery facility in North Carolina, as a result of begin manufacturing in 2025 for a variety of electrified automobiles. Based on Toyota, the Indiana EV announcement itself provides as much as “340 new, sustainable U.S. jobs.”
2024 Lexus TX 550h+ plug-in hybrid
As Toyota factors out, the Indiana plant already employs 7,500 staff and makes the Toyota Sienna hybrid minivan, Toyota Highlander and Grand Highlander SUVs, that are provided in hybrid and non-hybrid variations. It additionally makes the Lexus TX, which is obtainable in normal, hybrid, and TX 550h+ plug-in hybrid variants.