Toyota Partners With Tesla for Next Electric RAV 4

Tesla has been establishing itself as a major player in the electric car industry over the last several years, and it appears that the Toyota Motor Company has taken notice of this. It seems that Toyota is very confident with where Tesla is going in the future and earlier this year they decided to invest $50 million in the company with plans to partner with the company on future vehicles. We now know that the first car to be produced from the collaboration efforts of these two companies will come in the form of an electric Toyota RAV 4 vehicle. Toyota has already established themselves as a leader in the hybrid car market with the Prius and now it looks like there are starting to aim at gaining a large share of the electric vehicles market by producing some of the first electric SUV models.
Toyota awarded a $60 million contract to Tesla for the company to develop the drive train of the new all electric RAV 4. The components that Tesla will be responsible for include the battery systems, transmission, electric motors, and software and power electronics modules. These components may also make an appearance on Lexus SUV models as well, Toyota owns the Lexus brand. This is actually not Toyota’s first time building an all electric version of the RAV 4; the company built an electric RAV 4 over a decade ago and leased it to hundreds of customers. Many customers were satisfied with the car and purchased the vehicle from Toyota at the end of their lease and many of these cars are still on the road today. We expect that the new all electric RAV 4 will experience a longer production run this time around as electric cars are becoming more and more popular. The car should be successful early on due to the lack of competition in the market of all electric SUV automobiles.