Toyota remains tight-lipped on initial BZ4x supply, but more will find homes than original Prius

“Expect to hear a lot more about the BZ4x for Australia over the next six months.”

Toyota claims its upcoming BZ4x, a RAV4-sized EV that’s expected for Australian release in the second half of 2023, is likely to be a much greater commercial success than its first mass-market hybrid – the Prius.

Speaking at the launch of the Toyota Corolla Cross, Sean Hanley, Vice President of sales, marketing and franchising, remained tight-lipped about exact numbers of BZ4x, and whether it would be able to generate as many sales leads as the Tesla Model Y did in September 2022, or the brand’s own stalwart RAV4.

“I still don’t have a concrete number yet, because we’re still a little way off launch but we certainly wouldn’t launch a car unless we had healthy stock,” he said.

“It would be speculation for us now to give you that number, because it would be purely speculation on my part.”

Hanley was confident, though, that Toyota will manage to shift more than 137 BZ4x of the (the number of original Prius’ sold between October-December 2001) in the electric SUV’s first year of sale.

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Is there BZ4x demand?

Toyota is a stalwart brand in the hybrid space, offering electrified versions of nearly all of its SUVs and passenger cars, so surely an EV is something to get excited about?

“Outside of these types of discussions [with media]... there’s been a little bit of interest”, Hanley said.

“We’ve got so many other cars at the moment being launched, whether they be the Corolla Cross, the GR86, GR Yaris, GR Corolla, but we'll start to ramp up the awareness of [BZ4x] probably in the first half of next year.”

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But it is clear Hanley has high expectations of the brand’s new electric vehicle that is a twin-under-the-skin with the Subaru Solterra.

The BZ4x will be available with twin electric motors for AWD with peak power rated at 160kW and a 470 kilometre driving range (WLTP) from its 71.4kWh lithium-ion battery.

“We really didn’t want to ramp it up until we knew that we could get volume and get closer to a launch date. So we're in that phase now. So you could expect to hear a lot more about the BZ4x for Australia over the next six months,” the boss added.