Electric vehicles have reached a key milestone on the road to becoming ubiquitous. That’s because Toyota, America’s best-selling automaker, is now selling one.
Before now, Toyota hasnt sold the widely available,real electric vehicle in America. Toyota, a pioneer in hybrids with the Prius — the name means “To go before” in Latin — hasn’t been “going before” with electric vehicles. Tesla, Nissan, General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Hyundai, Kia and others have all beat Toyota to market with electric vehicles.
There were two generations of Toyota Rav4 EVs, butthose weren’t available nationwide and, besides, they were really just regular Rav4 SUVs fitted with batteries and electric motors. The second generationof Rav4 EVshad Tesla, not Toyota, stuff inside. Toyota has long had a more conservative view of electric vehicles than some other automakers that have pledged to go all-in, or nearly so, on EVs. Toyota isn’t pledging to make nothing but EVs by any set date.
The BZ4X was developed by Toyota in cooperation with Subaru.
The BZ4X was designed from the outset as an electric crossover SUV. It’s not some other vehicle fitted with batteries, a technique that usually results in a sub-standard products. This SUV was engineered in partnership with Subaru, which offers its own electric SUV, the Solterra. Both are based on the same engineering and they even look almost identical.
As with many Toyotas, the BZ4X has some aggressive design elements on the outside that belie a refreshingly mundane experience on the inside. Toyota, the US’ best-selling automaker last year, has earned its place by giving customers what they want. And what Americans mostly want is not to be bothered. There’s nothing in this vehicle thatmost cr ownerswould not be able to quickly figure out and adapt to.
While some other EV makers aim for brain-crushing acceleration, the BZ4X takesabout seven seconds, give or take, to get from zero to 60 miles an hour. And honestly, that’s just fine. It’s fairly quick, actually. No one really needs to accelerate faster than that. A little over 200 horsepower from the BZ4X’s electric motor or motors, depending on whether you get all-wheel-drive or not, is also perfectly decent and reasonable. [CNN]
