27 April 2022

Will Lexus achieve 1 million annual EV sales by 2030?

Lexus — the luxury car brand of Toyota — aims to sell 1 million (10 lakh) electric vehicles (EVs) annually by 2030, according to a report by Automotive News, but can it ramp up substantially to achieve this target?

The Lexus RZ 450e is one of the two EVs the luxury car giant sells now. Totally, the car company sells two electric vehicles as of now, with one of them being a bespoke EV.

Will Lexus achieve 1 million annual EV sales by 2030?
Lexus RZ 450e electric car

The company has been in the slow lane on EV manufacturing. However, Lexus intends to accelerate its pace substantially by scaling up the number of electric vehicles.

This could help it achieve its target of 1 million car sales a year by the end of this decade.

Lexus Motors’ EV portfolio right now comprises the front-wheel-drive UX 300e that comes with a 54.3 kWh battery pack.
 
Then, there is the new RZ 450e, which has a 71.4 kWh battery pack. The RZ 450e is built on Toyota’s e-TNGA architecture.

To achieve its ambitious target, Lexus has created a new division called Lexus Electrified that will focus only on developing electric cars.

This section was started in 2019, when Lexus also rolled out a series of design studies and indicated that it plans to come up with a litany of sporty-looking electric cars.

Lexus Motors’ target to sell 1 million electric cars every year from the next decade is a big challenge the Toyota brand has undertaken.

Takashi Watanabe, chief engineer of Lexus Electrified, talked about how difficult this shift could become.
 
According to him, it is a very difficult challenge to shift everything to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and maintain a sustainable business.

He added, “We need to cut the cost of batteries and innovate as far as the entire car manufacturing process goes.”

According to the chief engineer, there is another difficulty that Lexus is facing. The auto giant is finding it extremely challenging to set up its manufacturing unit for future electric vehicles.

This is because the EVs and their underpinnings could be shared with Toyota. Also, Lexus is looking to build factories for its new electric vehicles at the same location where it currently produces hybrid cars.

Lexus Motors reports its highest sales from the US. The luxury brand — in December 2021 — logged sales of 24,043 vehicles in the US. This is a fall of 37.1 per cent on a volume basis.

For the entire year, Lexus saw US sales at 304,476 units, a jump of 10.7 per cent on a volume basis.

Lexus has been seeing good demand from the US. And globally also, if it is to sell its new EVs, it could achieve its target quite easily so far as demand goes.

So, the only roadblock which could pose a problem for Lexus Motors to achieve its 1 million annual EV sales is production — with only two EVs on offer right now, it could be an uphill task for the Toyota luxury brand to set up an assembly line to produce so many cars and offer its buyers a wider range. 

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