I'm almost 70 years old and can still drift in a WRC car, I think there is no other car owner who can do it except for Akio Toyoda.
Just a few days ago, Toyota held a GR carnival in Shanghai, brought in a few WRC cars, and announced that it would introduce the GR Yaris, a small steel cannon, to China.
One thing to say, the effect is really explosive.
However, the more explosive news is that Akio Toyoda may have a more important task in Shanghai this time, that is, to make Lexus a domestic car.
According to a Bloomberg report, people familiar with the matter said that "Toyota Motor Corporation is discussing with the relevant authorities in Shanghai the possibility of building a wholly-owned plant". That is to say, Toyota wants to be like Tesla, which opened a factory in Shanghai, not a joint venture, only relying on its own cars to build and sell cars, and enjoy some policy and tax support.
And this wholly-owned factory will produce pure electric models of Lexus.
Okay, okay, you can also learn from Musk to flash in China to talk about business, right?
Seeing this news, countless poor friends who read the car must say that this thunder car is about to become a wolf in the car world. It's been more than ten years, and it's been passed on every year, and new discoveries have been made over and over again. I've seen the hemp, and the specifier is not scored.
But don't say it, this time the news of the domestic production of the thunder car feels much more reliable than the previous times.
As for why, let's talk about it a little bit.
In February last year, Toyota's big boss Akio Toyoda, who was driving and drifting at the beginning, announced that he was going to become the chairman, and the daily management and operation of the brand would be handed over to the previous leader of Lexus, Tsuneji Sato.
Koji Sato (left) Akio Yodanda (right)
As a result, as soon as Sato took office, he directly said that Akio Toyoda said before that electric cars are not good, it is all old and confused, and it is biased, and I now want to change the direction of Toyota to focus on electrification. And, the goal is ambitious:
By 2026, Toyota will sell 1.6 million electric cars a year, and by 2030, it will have to soar to 3.5 million units.
You know, last year, Tesla, the world's largest pure electric car company, bought a total of more than 1.8 million cars, which means that Toyota in the field of pure electric vehicles will have to catch up with Tesla next year, and directly overturn Tesla to become the world's No.1 six years later! It's on fire!
However, Sato looked back and saw that WOC, and the goal seemed to be set high.
Because after announcing the switch to pure electric at the beginning of last year, Toyota's pure electric models do not seem to be performing well in the global market. Although Toyota has sold more than 11 million vehicles worldwide throughout 2023, only a pitiful 104,000 pure electric models have been sold, accounting for less than 1%.
In the largest electric vehicle markets, China, Europe and the United States, Toyota's sales are less than a fraction of Tesla's. The annual sales of more than 20,000 units in China are still barely realized by supplying online car-hailing and taxi companies.
Toyota wants to become a pure electric leader, this status quo can't bear a little, and it must gnaw down these mainstream markets.
But it's a bit difficult to rely on Toyota to gnaw on its own.
After all, for so many years, the attitude towards new energy has been to bloom more, while stumbling on hydrogen energy, and on the other hand, it is ambiguous about pure electric vehicles.
The skill tree is also more and more strange, originally Toyota was the first car company to propose mass production of solid-state batteries, but now its own brands have made semi-solid-state batteries on the car, Toyota's own BZ series has used BYD's batteries, and its own plans have jumped N times, and now the latest schedule is 2026.
If you continue like this, let alone become a leader, it would be good not to withdraw from these mainstream markets.
On the other hand, the mature supply chain that has been rolled out in China in recent years is a good teammate. On product power, fight it to make a product that competes with domestic manufacturers, on price, so many suppliers can always choose low-price and high-quality cooperation, so that it is more fragrant than imported thunder cars, it is simply easy.
Moreover, the original reputation of the thunder car is basically on an equal footing with BBA in China, if it can really make a high-quality and inexpensive model, it may really be able to make the sales of the thunder car jump up, which is almost a perfect plan.
It is estimated that it is also because of this consideration that Toyota has contacted the Shanghai government this time, and at first glance, the probability of landing is quite high.
But, I'm going to say but.
From Toyota's point of view, this plan is about equal to a full score, but the conditions will probably be very harsh when negotiating with the Shanghai government to build a factory on its own.
Take Tesla as an example, Musk signed a VAM agreement with Shanghai at that time, it is OK to build a factory, and low-interest loans are OK, but it must pay 2.23 billion yuan in taxes every year and invest 14 billion yuan in the Shanghai factory every year.
If the tax revenue is not reached, the land will be recovered directly.
In other words, if you want to open a factory in Shanghai, you must ensure that future sales, profits and investment are all online, that is, Sato has to fulfill his promise to become the king of Elden pure electric handle, and sell the thunder car in China as a super hit like Tesla.
Judging from the current attitude of Lexus towards domestic products, I actually don't see the potential for it to sell out.
Let's take an example with everyone, I understand that Brother Neck has a friend who just bought a car, so let's call him Old A for the time being. Lao A's budget to buy a car at that time was more than 300,000 yuan, and he basically tried all the first- and second-tier luxury brands.
Audi is easy to drive and cheap, Volvo is light and easy to handle, Mercedes-Benz is comfortable to sit, and even tried the ideal, calling the space big sofa soft. When I tried the Lexus ES, Lao A felt that there was no strong memory point after a lap, so he asked more about the selling point of the car.
Everyone guessed how the sales answered, how good the factory of the thunder car was, how fine the production process was, and how professional the workers were, summed up in two words, ingenuity. But when it comes to the product itself, I can't say it.
The same thing happens on social platforms like Xiaohongshu, where ingenuity is one of the most common words in marketing content related to the Lexus ES or in tweets posted by dealers.
Even as long as you open the official website of Lexus and click on the brand concept, you can find that the first place is craftsmanship.
What does this mean, it shows that the focus of Lexus's current domestic propaganda is the brand premium of craftsmanship and luxury heritage.
This idea is indeed very appropriate for the brand's flagship model. For example, the sedan LS and the off-road vehicle LX were originally priced and equipped with high prices, plus some artisan stories with a little emotional value, and it really felt like driving a mobile artwork.
On the mid-range model, it's okay, Mercedes does just that. The big three-star standard and the hardware level are also improvised, and a large number of car owners who have accumulated their favorite brands can also be harvested.
But what is the problem with Lexus, the story of the mid-range models is there, but the materials and configuration are really too inferior.
For example, the main sales car ES, the engine of the entry-level ES200, the displacement of the dignified 2.0L is only 173 horsepower, and the brother pulled the ES200 to measure the horsepower, and the measured horsepower on the wheels is only 98 horsepower.
It's not 98 horses, but the measured horsepower of the Wuling Hongguang 1.5T engine has more than 110 horses! You are a luxury car that is 300,000 yuan smaller than the landing ES!
This is the case for the kingpin model, and even more so for other models. For example, the NX SUV is basically a Toyota RAV4 with a new shell, and the chassis materials have hardly changed. The smaller UX doesn't have a hydraulic lever on the bonnet, so you have to use a manual strut, and the entry-level model doesn't even have a reversing camera.
Domestic consumers are not interested in this strategy of crazy savings in actual product power but crazy promotion of brand premiums. Because of the price of two or three hundred thousand, it is too much more fragrant than the thunder cars.
So in the first five months of this year, although Lei Che sold nearly 80,000 cars in China, more than half of them were sold by reducing the price of ES models. The rest of the models that should have been in volume are basically in a state of paralysis.
However, judging from Lexus's current actions, they may have to eat the same old capital for a while: the price of the main sales model ES is getting bigger and bigger, and there are even owners in their early 200,000s of naked cars. But there is no news about its facelift, and the replacement is far away.
However, if the product is not updated, only by continuous price reduction, how long can Lexus last?
If such a strategy is extended to the pure electric platform, I think the prospects of the thundercar in China are still not optimistic.
After all, just look at Mercedes-Benz's EQ and BMW's i series, without the brand power supported by product power, even if it is as strong as Mercedes-Benz BMW, there is almost no room for survival in the current domestic market.
In view of the current all-electric RZ, the model with a small landing of 400,000 yuan, only a single motor of 150 kW, a battery of more than 67 degrees, no sunroof, and the interior is still ubiquitous fabrics and plastics.
I think Sato's goal of surpassing Tesla in 2030 may be the same as Toyota's solid-state battery, and I will have to jump on the ticket a few times.
Of course, the final suspense is still left until the construction of the factory is landed, and the answer can only be found after the domestic Lexus model is really off the assembly line. Well, I have a plan, it just so happens that the successor of the supercar LFA has been officially announced to be purely electric.
Or...
From Fast Technology