Toyota’s first car in its new Beyond Zero brand will be the bZ4X electric SUV. Look for it before the end of 2022.

Car companies love to create new brands. The Japanese Big Three gave us Lexus, Infiniti, and Acura 30+ years ago when they wanted to go upmarket with high profit premium cars. People who would never consider dropping $30000 on a Toyota were happy to spend double that on a Lexus. Such is the power of branding.

In the electric car era, several companies have have created new brands for their battery powered cars. Mercedes has its EQ division, Volkswagen its ID branded cars, BMW uses a simple “i,” while Hyundai is employing the Ioniq moniker for its battery electric cars. While all those companies have been ramping up EV offerings, Toyota has been largely content to hang out in the background and sell variations of its Synergy hybrid powertrain, cars it often misleadingly characterizes as “self charging electric cars.”

These days we tend to give the Renault Fluence Z.E. the honor of being the world’s first mass-production electric car. Others point to the Leaf, as it was the first one to be successful. And the vast majority of us tend to credit Tesla with the birth of the electric car revolution.

Japanese auto giant Toyota is working on a new-age hydrogen vehicle. When the words Toyota and Hydrogen are in the same sentence, the hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai comes to mind. Still, the Mirai is a hydrogen-electric car or FCEV (fuel-cell electric vehicle). It uses hydrogen fuel to convert electricity and power an onboard electric motor. This time, Toyota came up with something different.

“At the end of last year, we built a prototype that provided that ‘car feeling’ that car lovers love, such as through sound and vibration, even though we were dealing with environmental technology, said Koji Sato, Chief Branding Officer, and Gazoo Racing Company President. ” It was only recently that I realized, as one thing led to another, that we could use technologies that we had on hand.”