Toyota unveiled its cheapest electric car — the bZ3X crossover instantly became a sales hit

Although the Japanese company Toyota Motor remains the largest automaker in the world, it is famous for its noticeable conservatism in its engineering solutions, and in the field of electrification, it places its main bet on hybrids. For this reason, the release of the electric crossover Toyota bZ3X for $15,000 on the Chinese market became a real sensation.

Image source: Toyota Motor

More precisely, Toyota’s intentions to bring such an electric car to the Chinese market have been known since April last year, but this month the brand’s third large-scale electric car has made a splash even in the Chinese market, which is spoiled by new products. Since the basic version of the car is offered in China at a price of about $15,000, 10,000 applications were received in the first hour after the start of accepting orders, and the server of the GAC and Toyota joint venture even temporarily stopped working due to the influx of visitors.

The first global electric vehicle without an internal combustion engine for Toyota is the bZ4X crossover, which did not enjoy significant demand. The second electric vehicle was the bZ3 sedan, aimed at the Chinese market, which the company produces with the participation of a partner in the face of the FAW auto concern. The Japanese giant has another partner in China – the GAC concern, it was in collaboration with which the third fully electric model of the brand, designated bZ3X, was developed and is being produced.

The design of the crossover has features typical of many Chinese electric cars. With a body length of 4600 mm, the wheelbase reaches 2765 mm, the width varies between 1850 and 1875 mm, depending on the configuration, and the height reaches 1600 mm. This electric car can only be mono-drive, which is due to the desire of the manufacturer to make it as cheap as possible.

In total, the Toyota bZ3X is offered in seven trim levels on the Chinese market, with the top-end version costing $22,000. Five entry-level trim levels do not have lidars, while two top-end trim levels do, and this is the first time that sensors of this type have appeared on Toyota products. The crossover trim levels with lidar also support the Momenta 5.0 active driver assistance system and are equipped with an Nvidia Orin X processor with a performance level of 254 trillion operations per second. With this set of equipment, bZ3X crossovers can drive on the streets of Chinese cities in automatic mode in most situations, without requiring the use of high-precision digital maps of the area.

The single traction electric motor develops a power of 150 or 165 kW, depending on the configuration. The capacity of the traction battery should be enough for 430, 520 or 610 km of travel according to the conventional CLTC cycle, also depending on the crossover version.