Toyota persists with the internal combustion engine

Toyota is investing $383 million in U.S. production, divided among four sites to develop four-cylinder engines. According to the company’s announcement, this engine is “the heart of new Toyota and Lexus vehicles”.

The largest part of the investment is $222 million for Toyota’s plant in Huntsville, Alabama. The automaker will build a new four-cylinder production line there, and those engines will be available for both hybrids and petrol cars. The factory will also expand by 34,700 m2.

The plant in Troy, Missouri, will receive an additional $109 million to add equipment to make the hood for the four-cylinder engine. The factory in Jackson, Tennessee, will receive a $36 million investment to produce the body.

Finally, the plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, will receive $16 million to expand the flexibility of the four-cylinder machine’s production line, allowing it to handle 600,000 units per year.

Although still determined to pursue the internal combustion engine, Toyota has not completely turned its back on electric cars. In October 2021, the Japanese company poured $3.4 billion into producing electric vehicle batteries in the US, including a dedicated battery factory with 1,750 employees, starting in 2025.

Toyota plans to build hybrid vehicles with solid-state batteries by 2025. The company believes that solid-state batteries if used in electric vehicles will be very expensive, so they can be used in a smaller form to make it affordable. That’s a hybrid car.

Toyota is about to launch a family of electric vehicles called bZ. The first of them is the bZ4X, which will go on sale in the US later this year. The electric crossover starts at $43,215, with a top price of $49,995.

The front-wheel drive version of the bZ4X has a single electric motor producing 201 hp and an estimated range of 406 km. The all-wheel drive setup delivers 214 hp, but the estimated range on a single charge is 367 km.

Sunshine (according to Motor1)