In Tokyo today, Toyota Motor Corp. held a media briefing led by President & CEO Akio Toyoda on the company’s strategy for achieving carbon neutrality, particularly its strategy for battery electric vehicles, which he said, “represent one of the most promising options.”

The company plans to invest ¥8 trillion in rolling out 30 battery EV models by 2030, globally offering a full lineup of battery EVs in the passenger and commercial segments. At the event, it showed a little more than half of them, for a staggering glimpse into its future bZ, Toyota, and Lexus brand product pipeline.

“Most of the Toyota battery EVs that we introduced here are models that will be coming out in the next few years,” said Toyoda. “We aim to achieve global sales of 3.5 million battery EVs per year by 2030.”

“We are living in a diversified world and in an era in which it is hard to predict the future,” he explained. “Therefore, it is difficult to make everyone happy with a one-size-fits-all option. That is why Toyota wants to prepare as many options as possible for our customers around the world.”

Those options include hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles; however, the focus today was on battery electric vehicles, with a heavy emphasis on design and not much in the way of technical details.

Leading those battery-electric efforts is the company’s bZ (beyond ZERO) series. Toyota has engineered a dedicated platform, with the first model in the lineup being the recently announced bZ4X developed with Subaru. It is preparing for production at Toyota’s Motomachi Plant now for its launch next year.

At the media event, Toyota announced the expansion of the bZ lineup, showing a midsize SUV and the most compact SUV in the series designed with Europe and Japan in mind. For the smaller SUV, engineers are aiming for a power efficiency of 125 Wh/km, which Toyoda said would be the highest in the compact SUV class. The range also gets a midsize sedan designed to meet customers’ expectations for a first car and a large SUV with available third-row seats.

The Lexus brand will expand the options for carbon-neutral vehicles by offering a full lineup of battery EVs.

Its first battery-driven EV will be called the RZ, with the Z standing for Zero, said Koji Sato, President, Lexus International, Chief Branding Officer.

“Speaking as the master driver, I want a car that I want to keep driving forever!” said Toyoda. “It should be environmentally friendly, but straight-up fun to drive! Let’s make that car for Lexus’ new chapter with the Z brand.”

Sato elaborated: “We will deliver a unique electrified Lexus that combines linear motor acceleration/deceleration, brake feeling, and exhilarating handling to further pursue the joy of driving.”

That Lexus Driving Signature will move to the next stage through the development of the new Sports Battery EV. Sato said that the sports car will showcase the unique driving performance of a Lexus and become a model that symbolizes the future of the brand.

“Acceleration time will be in the low 2-second range, cruising range over 700 km, and with the possible use of solid-state batteries in mind, we will aim to create a truly high-performance battery EV,” said Sato.

The next-generation battery EV sports car “inherits the driving taste, or the secret sauce, of the performance cultivated via the development of the LFA,” he added. “We will extend the driving taste refined this way to other models as we evolve Lexus into a brand centered on battery EVs.”

Lexus aims to realize a full lineup of battery EVs in all vehicle segments by 2030 and to have battery EVs account for 100% of its vehicle sales in Europe, North America, and China, totaling 1 million units globally. It aims for battery EVs to make up 100% of its global vehicles sales in 2035.

To achieve the new corporate electrification goals, Toyoda said that Toyota has “invested in various areas for a long time.” In 1997, he reminded the audience that Toyota launched the Prius, the world’s first mass-production hybrid electric vehicle.

“But in fact, our development of battery EVs had started before that,” he said. “In 1992, we established the Electric Vehicle Development Division, and we introduced the RAV4 EV to the market in 1996.”

At the same time that it started the development of battery EVs in the early 1990s, Toyota also began the development of fuel cell electric vehicles that run on hydrogen. In 2002, the company introduced the FCHV to the market, and in 2008 that vehicle was redesigned into the Toyota FCHV-adv. In 2014, the first-generation Mirai was launched. Since then, it has been using the technologies to power other vehicles such as buses and large trucks.

In the area of batteries, Toyota has researched, developed, and produced batteries in-house for many years. In 1996, the company established what is today called Prime Earth EV Energy. While refining its technologies related to nickel-metal hydride batteries, company engineers started accelerating the development of lithium-ion batteries in 2003. Since having established its Battery Research Division in 2008, we have been advancing research on solid-state batteries and other next-generation batteries.

“Last year, we established Prime Planet Energy & Solutions to accelerate integrated efforts in the battery business,” Toyoda said. “Over the past 26 years, we have invested nearly 1 trillion yen and produced more than 19 million batteries. We believe that our accumulated experience is an asset that gives us a competitive edge.”

Going forward, Toyota will increase its new investment in batteries from the 1.5 trillion yen announced in September to 2 trillion yen, aiming to realize even more-advanced, high-quality, and affordable batteries.

The reason for the increased investments is clear. With the new goal of 3.5 million BEVs, the company estimates it will need about 280 GWh of battery capacity by 2030.