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It was announced this week that Toyota and Subaru would work together on a new electric vehicle platform, a platform that will combine Subaru's all-wheel drive expertise with Toyota's electrification chops. Here is an overview of the new "e-TNGA" platform, which Toyota says will underpin future medium and large size electric passenger vehicles and help achieve the company's goal of selling 1 million of battery and fuel cell cars by 2025.
Yesterday, Toyota's executive vice president, Shigeki Terashi, made a presentation entitled "Aiming to Popularize EVBs", which provided a roadmap for the future development of the company's electric vehicle. He highlighted a new platform to be developed alongside Subaru.
The platform, dubbed "e-TNGA," follows a modular strategy similar to that of the new Toyota Global Architecture (TNGA), which underpins much of Toyota's current lineup of cars and SUVs. This is to say that e-TNGA should allow the company to build a vast range of vehicles on a basic package, as described by Toyota in the excerpt below. of his press release:
The platform will be developed to be broadly applicable to several types of vehicles, including C & D segment sedans and SUVs, as well as the efficient development of derivative vehicle models.
The graph below describes in more detail how Toyota and Subaru will achieve this goal "A platform for many types of vehicles":
Based on the above slide, it appears that the provisions regarding the motor and battery mounts will remain the same in the e-TNGA variants, but the wheelbase (and the length of the battery), the door over-front and rear and the overall width of the vehicle may vary. There are also provisions that may allow variations in the size of the engine.
Here is an overview of the specific parts that the two manufacturers will modify to adapt e-TNGA to SUVs and sedans of various shapes and sizes:
The platform looks like that of the Tesla Model 3 and shares a number of attributes with the Volkswagen MEB configuration; the batteries are located between the ground axles and two engines (one at the front and one at the rear) are available to allow rear wheel drive and all-wheel drive.
But unlike Tesla or VW, Toyota announces that its new platform is also able to offer front-wheel drive.
(Tesla and VW could theoretically do this, but the latter has expressly stated that it only provides for rear-wheel drive and AWD variants, and I have also heard nothing of the former about front-wheel drive. )
But Toyota does not only work with Subaru to develop electric vehicles. Terashi mentioned in his presentation that his company collaborated with Daihatsu and Suzuki on compact models:
And speaking of compact electric vehicles, Toyota plans to build ultra-compact EVs for Japan by 2020:
Terashi showed three ultra-compact vehicles in his presentation. The business model proposed above is illustrated above, the black business model, and the "i-ROAD" model, a three-wheeled vehicle at 60 km / h with a maximum range of 50 km and a goal – according to Toyota – "serve the last mile in urban areas. "
In addition, Toyota has submitted plans for the production of three electric vehicles for walking areas, the type of stand-up below is expected below by 2020, and types for seats and wheelchairs to come in 2021:
In announcing that Subaru and Toyota are planning to work together on the new platform for electric cars, Toyota said the new bones would form the basis of a future intermediate SUV that both companies will jointly develop and sell under their respective brands.
In addition, Toyota said in its press release Thursday that the partnership "would apply Subaru AWD technologies and Toyota's vehicle electrification technologies". The first part is interesting because Subaru's expertise usually lies in AWD systems. for internal combustion engine vehicles, and all-wheel drive configurations for electric vehicles tend to be very different.
Nevertheless, I bet that various traction control strategies used in ICE cars could also apply to electric vehicles. It will be interesting to see what both companies offer.
Toyota also mentions in its press release how the current social and political climate has made this Subaru partnership necessary:
… due to significant variations in the energy situation of each country or region and government policies, as well as resulting differences in environmental regulations, infrastructure preparation steps and market needs in electrified vehicles , effective and fast the development of appropriate products is a must. A flawless stay
In addition, the commercialization of EBVs necessitates the use of high capacity batteries and, together with the popularization of EBVs, new requirements will be imposed on the supply of batteries. In addition, due to differences in the way cars will be used due to the maximum cruising range and the state of infrastructure construction, sales methods based on a new approach will also be needed.
These and other problems present an increasing number of cost, supply and sales issues.
Toyota's presentation goes much further, including planned collaborations between the automaker and a number of companies (including Panasonic, BYD, CATL, Toshiba, GS Yuasa, Toyota Industries) to facilitate the purchase of batteries. This tends to be a big problem in the electric vehicle sector.
This is an interesting initiative by Toyota, a manufacturer who was one of the first pioneers of hybrid cars, but has so far been rather conservative when it comes to fully electric vehicles. It's a big problem for Toyota, even if it's not as big as what Volkswagen plans to do.
You can see Terashi's full remarks below:
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