> I would prefer if Toyota just released a new EV model with roughly the same proportions as the Corolla

Indeed. Toyota's days are numbered.

BYD is selling EVs for US$14K in Australia. Toyota is Nokia, they don't know it just yet. Corolla EV is 30K USD, gas 25K.

AUD 19,900 driveway (means taxes, registration etc included), or about US$14K: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49772728

> Cars that are designed from the ground up to be EVs tend to be much better

Better here means more efficient, cheaper to assemble, more spacious on the inside, etc. Having to repurpose space left when you remove the combustion engine + fuel systems and other supporting infrastructure to host an electric drive train plus battery typically means compromising on these things. It works but it won't be as good as it could be.

And of course in a market full of competitively priced EVs from vendors that designed them from the ground up to be pure EVs that means fighting with your hands tied behind your back.

This thing will probably still do alright for Toyota. But they'll have to discount it to compensate for it just not being all that great compared to its more optimized competition.

Toyota is very good at selling things at a bargain though. They are actually holding up pretty well compared to other legacy manufacturers (they even managed a bit of growth last year in units sold). But it's in a market that except for EVs isn't growing much where the Chinese manufacturers are expanding their market share globally at the cost of pretty much everyone else. Toyota is kicking the can a bit down the road here. Probably to buy some time to build something better in a few years. But they might be milking this platform for quite some time.

>Corolla is expected to come in several powertrains, including gas, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric.

And also it’s just going to be confusing for the customers. Which one to get? Which one is better? It’s hard to imagine how same platform can have efficient structural layout for the large battery and for the ICE engine.

EV is much about software as well, and Toyota is not going to shine in this area either…

Some excellent EVs are based on the CMA platform, which also supports combustion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Modular_Architecture

Polestar 2, Volvo XC40 & C40 (now EX40/CX40)

The upside of using a platform for EV and hybrid engines is that it typically looks a lot better aesthetically than an EV only platform.

Just look at the Mercedes S class versus the EQS. The EQS was ground up designed as an EV and because of the design decisions made in that process is the ugliest Mercedes designed ever.

Same with the Audi A6 which was always a masterclass in design and now is a generic blob of a car with the new EV only model.

I assume the same is true for the new C-HR+, right? It shares the name with the hybrid C-HR, but as far as I understand that's just marketing and it's actually based on the bZ platform.

Our 2004 RAV4 is dying and I'm seriously considering the C-HR+, not because of brand loyalty but because it seems to be one of the best EVs I can find on the market. 600+ km range and 224 HO for around 35k€, plus actual physical knobs in the car and mechanical door handles seems like a great deal to me.

> I would prefer if Toyota just released a new EV model with roughly the same proportions as the Corolla

I think the issue is time and money. Toyota maybe doesn't want to spend the money on a completely different car in the compact sedan category just for EVs - at least not yet. Plus, it might mean waiting several years when they want something out now. Sometimes it's about tradeoffs like time and money. Adapting an ICE Corolla might be reasonably cheap and fast. They might feel the need to have an EV Corolla out sooner than later. They might want to take their time with a new platform EV so that they don't put out something that doesn't meet their quality standards. While the drivetrain might be different, everything else in the Corolla is battle tested.

I agree that it's much better to design an EV to be an EV from the ground up. The reality is, however, that consumers don't want EVs for a myriad of reasons and prefer hybrids. And developing two completely different platforms is too expensive even for a higly profitable company like Toyota.

I personally never wanted "an EV", I just wanted a car that happened to have an electric drivetrain. So Stellantis's choice to present models with a choice of drivetrains suited me perfectly. I'm neither ashamed nor proud to drive electric, it's just a choice I made and it doesn't need to be part of my identity.

This feels like Toyota optimizing for Toyota rather than for the EV buyer

Which is kinda ironic because Toyota is probably the only one that did hybrid from the ground up with their HSD transmission.

That looks like a completely new car with the sub model being Corolla… it looks nothing like the Corolla of today and past..

Yeah, that's why Tesla, Polestar and even BYD work so well.

The first Hyundai Ioniq did this pretty good. Exceptions exist.

BMW i3 has entered the chat.

And left production, since politics decided to kill the EV AFAICT.

That's also because people prefer Hybrids.

Unfortunately, companies still try to make EVs -- even when designed from the ground up to be electric-only -- pretend to be ICE, for example with forward creep. I really wish I could turn that off. (For some reason, "one-pedal driving" is some super integrated all-in-one feature that has grown to include the lack of forward creep, so the ability to turn off the forward creep apparently gets consumed by unwillingness to implement the entirety of one-pedal driving. Which unfortunately affects my vehicle)

My Mii/Citigo/e-Up EV is a retrofit, but it's a really great EV.