More electric pick-up news – buried in Toyota Motor Europe’s deluge of press releases is a teaser confirming three new electric vehicles coming to the Old Continent by next year. As expected, the silhouette image provided below is very SUV-heavy with two crossovers – including one that looked suspiciously like the Land Cruiser Se concept shown at the Japan Mobility Show (JMS) back in 2023.
The most interesting of the trio, however, is the vehicle in the middle, very obviously a pick-up truck. This is significant news that puts the world’s largest carmaker right in the thick of the nascent electric truck market. To its credit, Toyota has long telegraphed this move, first with the Hilux Revo BEV in 2022 and then the EPU concept that was shown alongside the Land Cruiser Se at JMS.
Unlike the silhouette on the right that looks very much like the Land Cruiser Se, the truck in the middle does not resemble the EPU, which had a much shorter front end and rear overhang. While teasers may not always be representative of the final product, this points to the electric truck being based on a regular combustion-powered body-on-frame model, rather than being a bespoke unibody offering like the EPU was.
As such, this confirmation opens the door for an EV version of the new ninth-generation Hilux, set to gain the Travo suffix in Thailand. In fact, such a model has already been confirmed and will enter production in the Land of Smiles by the end of this year.
Toyota Motor Asia executive vice president Pras Ganesh told Reuters in Thailand last year that the company is intent on “producing the Hilux BEV over here,” and while aimed squarely at the local market, the truck is being considered for export.
Many media outlets who picked the story up interpreted this to mean that the eighth-generation-based Hilux Revo BEV would be heading into production as is, but that’s unlikely given that the current generation is nearing the end of its ten-year lifecycle. Indeed, Pras’ comments hinted that the EV version’s configuration was still very much in the air, with Toyota looking to strike a good balance between range and capability.
“The more range I have to put on it, the more battery I have to put on it, which means the weight of the vehicle also becomes significantly heavier, which means the loading can be much less,” he said. “So “is it going to meet the customer’s usage needs?” is always our biggest issue. We are always trying to understand what they do.”
A production Hilux BEV will likely be the first one-tonne electric offering from a mainstream manufacturer, although rival Isuzu already promised a D-Max EV this year, while there are murmurs of Ford joining the fray with a Ranger EV. Several Chinese companies have already flooded the market with electric pick-ups of their own, including the Maxus T90 EV and the JAC T9 EV.
GALLERY: Toyota Hilux Revo BEV at BIMS 2023
GALLERY: Toyota EPU Concept at JMS 2023
