Orders crash Toyota website
Toyota has launched its cheapest battery electric vehicle (BEV), the bZ3X, which has gone on sale in China.
Known locally as the Bozhi 3X, when it was put on the market by GAC Toyota, the Chinese joint venture between Toyota and GAC Group, it racked up 10,000 orders in its first hour causing its website to crash.
The bZ3X was first unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show in early 2024 and is the production version of the BZ FlexSpace concept shown at Auto Shanghai a year before that.
Despite an exterior design, which makes it look like the bigger of the two, the bZ3X is slightly smaller than the bZ4X and will be available exclusively in China in seven variants, including two with lidar-based navigation capabilities.
The two lidar-enabled models are the most expensive variants, going for the equivalent of about NZ$32,300 and NZ$38,700 respectively.
The bZ3X takes a design cue from Tesla with a single large horizontal centre screen in the cabin, which measures 14.6 inches.
The two variants with enhanced navigation technology use a 5.0 smart-driving system from Chinese autonomous driving start-up Momenta. This system provides for full-scenario navigate-on-autopilot functionality without the need for high-definition maps.
Range varies across the models, starting from 430km on the China Light-Duty Vehicle Test Cycle (CLTC) for the base model with its 50.03kWh lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery, up to 520km on the CLTC for lidar-enhanced models with a 58.37 LFP battery and then the maximum of 610km from a 67.92kWh LFP battery.
