Toyota Unveils 7 New EVs for U.S. Market, Vowing "No Turning Back"

At least two of these Toyota EVs will be American-made and use locally sourced batteries.

Toyota and Lexus revealed five new electric cars for the U.S. last week, some of which will go on sale in the fall and the others by early next year.
Two additional EVs are in the pipeline for the American market. They will be U.S.-made and use locally sourced batteries.
The automaker said it doesn’t want to “give up” to competition and sees EV sales growth on the horizon.

Toyota’s two bestsellers, the Camry and the RAV4, are going hybrid-only. Every trim of both models will now include an electric motor and a lithium-ion battery, easing the load on the gas engine and cutting emissions, without changing how owners road-trip or refuel.

But that’s just the start of a broader electrification push as it prepares to launch multiple fully electric models over the next couple of years.

Toyota is gearing up to launch seven new fully electric vehicles in the U.S. by 2027,

Bloomberg

reported Thursday. I saw five of them last week at the company’s North American HQ in Plano, Texas. The lineup includes the refreshed bZ (already
reviewed
on
InsideEVs
), the new
C-HR
, the larger all-terrain
bZ Woodland
, and two Lexus models: the
updated RZ
and the all-new
ES sedan
.

The sixth and seventh models are under wraps for now. But at least one of them is rumored to be a long-awaited three-row electric SUV, which could also be the production version of the 2021 “bZ Large SUV” concept.

Still, Toyota is pushing ahead. That likely means the company sees real growth on the horizon. Toyota typically doesn’t commit a new model to production unless it expects to sell 100,000 to 150,000 units a year. But in this case, if its EV sales fall short, it’ll export the vehicles to markets where demand is strong.

“In the future, we think it’s a really important segment that we don’t want to give up to the competition,” Cooper Ericksen, Toyota’s senior vice president of planning and strategy, told

Bloomberg

.

Competition is indeed growing and Toyota doesn’t want to be left behind. Tesla still commands nearly half the U.S. EV market and has cheaper models coming soon. General Motors, Hyundai, and Kia are all expanding their EV lineups, especially in the crossover and large family SUV segments Americans love. Toyota doesn’t seem keen to let them run away with it.

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