Toyota is a little late to the electric car game with only one fully battery-powered model in the United States so far: The memorably named bZ4X. Facing pressure from pretty much everywhere, it wants to change that. To preview the arrival of at least one new EV, the company showed off the bZ Compact SUV Concept at the LA Auto Show Wednesday night. It’s basically a smaller bZ4x with some unique interior details.
Range figures and power numbers were not provided. This is just a concept to say, hey, if you think the bZ4x is a little big, here’s something smaller that we might make. Think Corolla Cross versus RAV4.
On the outside, the bZ Compact SUV Concept strongly resembles the larger bZ4X. The inside of the car features a steering yoke much like the current bZ, although that feature is not available on U.S.-spec cars. There are also curved screens in this concept; the current bZ4X tries to channel some curved screen energy with the shaping of its display surrounds, but the screens themselves don’t have any contour. Other cars like the Cadillac Escalade, Porsche Taycan, and Lucid Air all utilize curved screens, so it’s plausible a production version of the bZ Compact SUV Concept might actually have this feature. Toyota is typically pretty conservative when it comes to interior design, though.
That being said, there are recycled materials on the inside that boost the vehicle’s eco-friendly credentials. There’s also a virtual assistant named ”Yui” which sort of seems like Toyota’s own in-house Amazon Alexa.
This angular concept will likely end up as one of the five bZ-branded vehicles Toyota plans to build, making up just a fraction of the 30 total EVs the company plans to introduce this decade.
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