Toyota teases X Prologue, its first all-electric vehicle a few days before its launch. While the company isn’t a stranger to electric concepts and hybrid vehicles, the X Prologue might be the very first all-electric, mass-market car that the company will produce.
As for the teaser itself, it doesn’t show much beyond the single headlight. Even the press release doesn’t say much (it’s only 31 words and 169 characters) so it’s obvious that Toyota wants to keep everything a surprise before the initial unveiling.
Toyota is keeping everything under wraps, but it’s likely that the X Prologue might be a mid-sized crossover that will be the first to use the e-TNGA (Toyota New Global Architecture) platform, which will eventually spawn a whole range of vehicles.
EVs (electric vehicles) are starting to become more popular in wealthier nations that have begun to put hard dates for the eventual ban of internal combustion engines on their roads.
There are speculations about the X Prologue being the same Rav4-sized electric SUV that Toyota and Subaru co-developed. This might be a bit of a stretch, partly because Subaru filed a trademark for that SUV calling it the Evoltis, a planned rival of the Tesla Model X, which is also expected to be launched in Europe. But then again it’s not impossible that Toyota may have built the X Prologue out of the same architecture of the all-electric SUV. The fact that these two companies even worked on an electric SUV comes as a surprise since both Toyota and Subaru, have mostly shied away from making all-electric vehicles.
The tease may have come as a surprise considering that it has taken Toyota a while to fully commit to creating all-electric vehicles. Their internal research proved that the total greenhouse gas emissions of an all-electric and hybrid vehicle are roughly the same, which lends credence to Toyota’s CEO Akio Toyoda maintains the line of thinking that electric vehicles are overhyped, partly because of the misconception that electric cars run cleaner than traditional vehicles. However, they’re not quick to dismiss a good opportunity to grow their market profile as well as to try fulfilling the demand for electric vehicles.
To watch the launch and see more details about Toyota’s first-ever electronic vehicle, you may tune in via www.x-prologue.com on Wednesday 17th March at 10:00 CET.
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