Toyota has been known to be slower to the EV party with no BEV (Battery Electric Vehicles) currently available in Australia. The bZ4X, Toyota’s first BEV model, which was launched earlier this year in the US has been allowed to be sold again.
That’s after a major recall bought sales to a grinding halt back in June this year. The recall literally involved “wheels falling off” this EV. The defect has now been fixed, nearly four months later.
This recall impacted over 2,700 customer-delivered EVs. During the recall period, Toyota even offered to buy back the customer-delivered EVs in August.
Toyota has advised that they will ensure all the hub bolts are replaced and correctly tightened. The problem has been fixed at the production level too.
After this fix, production on the 70 kWh+ battery-equipped SUV has resumed again. The batteries on this EV are supplied by CATL and PPES (Prime Planet Energy & Solutions). The latter is a joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic formed in 2020.
The bz4X EV is designed to be a more affordable potential competitor to Tesla Model Y and the Volkswagen ID.4. Two of Volkswagen’s ID.4’s were recently spotted in Sydney last month while the Tesla Model Y was the third best-selling car in Australia during September.
Toyota has also previously announced the arrival of the ground-up EV in Australia but it’s expected to arrive sometime in 2023. In the US, bZ4X is priced at $42,000 USD which with the current exchange rate will be around $65,500 AUD. That’s getting very close to the Model Y pricing in Australia.
Toyota has also recently announced the next EV in the bZ range. It will be called the Toyota bZ3 and is set to be launched in China later this year. This EV will be a small sedan built in a collaboration with BYD. BYD will be supplying their blade batteries to Toyota as part of this arrangement.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.