Meet Toyota’s Tiny Electric City Car
Though Toyota has long been one of the pioneers of electrified driving technology, it has yet to launch a production vehicle that relies purely on electric motor-driven propulsion. However, the automaker is hard at work on building an entire portfolio of electric models for 2025, and the first of these will launch in Japan next year.
Dubbed the Toyota Ultra-Compact Battery-Electric Vehicle, this new electric city car is tiny. It measures only 98 inches long and 51 inches, and as you might have guessed, the range is fairly short too. With only 62 miles of range, this is a vehicle meant for short-distance travel, but as people living in the city generally don’t tend to go more than 62 miles in one trip, this shouldn’t be an issue — and the tiny dimension is certain to prove useful.
With only a top speed of 60 kilometers per hour, or just over 37 mph, Toyota says the two-seater BEV is “specifically designed to meet the daily mobility needs of customers who make regular, short-distance trips such as the elderly, newly licensed drivers, or business-people visiting local customers,” also highlighting its extremely short turning radius.
Related: Why buy a Toyota hybrid?
The automaker also says the little car is just one of various new transportation models it is exploring with approximately 100 corporate and government partners looking to create “safe, unrestricted, and environmentally-friendly transportation options in urban or mountainous communities.”
Charging the Ultra-Compact BEV from 0 to 100 percent takes about five hours on a 200-volt charger, with no fast-charging capability specified as of yet. Toyota will show off the car at the 2019 Tokyo Motor Show before unleashing it on Tokyo’s streets at the end of 2020.
Related: Check out the Toyota Prius Prime plug-in
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