Toyota just KILLED their next-gen EV program

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]I'm not going to lie, this one actually surprised me a little bit. Toyota and Lexus have been working on new battery technology, giga casting, software defined vehicles, rearranging uh certain parts of their manufacturing facilities to accommodate for these chassis rolling along like like robots by themselves while the car is being assembled.

[00:00:21]There's a lot of cool technology that Toyota likes been working on to get this vehicle out. Well, it has just been killed off not that long after Honda just killed off of all of their Zero Series EV development as well. So, we're going to break this down today. I've seen this vehicle a few times. Um, once well, when it was reveal revealed in 2023, the Japan Mobility Show. I'll play some of that B-roll for you guys. David and I walked around this thing. We're like, "This is radical. We don't know if it looks good or not. All these screens make us kind of sick, honestly, but it was cool." We're like, "It's a concept."

[00:00:54]But then Lex is like, "Yeah, we're going to bring it out as a production car." So the crazy thing is is that last summer, this would have been May, so a year ago, May of 2025, there's HQC at Toyota headquarters in Plano, and they showed this car alongside of the the new Lexus ES, which I've just finally took a year from reveal of the Lexus ES to driving it, and now it's finally out. So driving impressions are up. Hybrid impressions went up yesterday. uh frontwheel drive EV impressions the day before. I will get all-wheel drive 500E electric car impressions up and then I have a fuel economy test coming up on the ES and maybe like uh missed opportunities with the ES if you guys want to see a video where I talk about the missed opportunities with the new Lexus ES. I might there I have a lot of thoughts about it that I still haven't fully communicated in the car reviews. So anyways, we'll talk about this today, but if you're new to the channel, I cover more than one thing typically in a video, and we have a lot to discuss today. We're going to talk about Toyota sales falling. Uh Ferrari CEO defending the luche, which is a joke. Um Mitsubishi confirming the mater.

[00:02:06]There's a lot of other Mitsubishi news we're going to cover today. And then at the end, we're going to talk about Nissan sales. They only report quarterly. Uh, but they also share their sales and production results later in the month for the month prior. I know it's confusing, but this is going to be fun to compare Nissan sales compared to Honda sales, for example, here in the United States. Which models are doing well, which are carrying the brand, things like that. But a lot of really exciting Mitsubishi stuff that we're going to talk about today after we get through this article right here. So, if you guys are excited for today's news, hit the like button. Like I said, I cover car news every single day with a few asterisks. There's a just a handful of days throughout the year that I take a day off. Let's get into this. This is the headliner for me. Toyota halting development of next generation EV. This is the LFZC.

[00:02:57]And Lexus said, "Hey, it's coming in 2026 when this car was announced in 2023."

[00:03:04]And even the new RZ in some ways, but especially the new ES took design elements from this car. Now, this car that never gotten a name as a production car, but I was calling it the IS. Yeah, everyone's been saying from Japan anyways, that the next generation is was going to be electric, an electric version of this car, but I always said there's this possibility where you could have an electric is and still a hybrid is that could run parallel to each other. But it looks like at this point the is it's going to be a a flex vehicle, meaning it's going to be probably uh gas, if not hybrid standard, and then they'll probably be able to put in uh plug-in hybrid, maybe. I don't know. It's a pretty small car, but most likely they would do hybrid and a fully battery electric variants in the future, but that requires a new platform. The current platform can't accept that sort of flexibility. So, there's a new platform being developed. We know this because um there's going to be a new Supra. There's going to be a new um Lexus coupe that combines RC and LC.

[00:04:14]There's going to be a new IS that has to have a new IS so they can make the new IS um hit as many markets as as possible with different powertrains. Okay. EV and internal combustion/hybrid.

[00:04:28]All right. So, this is good news for the IS that it's not going to be doubled down as only electric car going forward.

[00:04:36]Thank God. Remember, it was going to be produced in the IG prefecture, but um I think this happened when I was in Japan.

[00:04:44]So, this would have been um not this year, but the year before. So, this would have been end of 2024 or late 24.

[00:04:51]I was in Japan with Honda. And that's when the this LFZC went from 2026 and it got pushed back to 2027. Toyota says they're still developing giga casting and solidstate batteries with plans to explore introducing a next generation EV again. Of course, I mean they're not going to stop developing EVs. It's just how fast do they want to roll these things out and how much money do they want to pump into it. They'll also consider expanding these technologies to popular vehicle types like SUVs. Okay, of course that's like the main the main selling type of vehicle in the world is crossover right now. Toyota Global EV sales in 2025 rose 42% to almost 200,000 vehicles. You know, you could say largely due to yes, the refreshes in their TGA K ENGA platform vehicles like the Lexus RZ, um the Bezy, the Bezy Woodland, stuff like that. But also um the Chinese vehicles like the exclusive BZ3X, BZ3 sedan, they have the new BZ flagship sedan over there. China is not doing great right now. No, no automakers, no market in the world is doing great right now other than maybe parts of Southeast Asia or something.

[00:06:07]Oh, India. India is the only place in the world, I would say, that has a growing, healthy, and predictably strong market. But Toyota sales have dropped for a third straight month on declines in China and the Middle East. Now Toyota's struggling a lot with the Middle East blockade and the straight of Hormuse stuff seemingly more so than other competitors. So their sales dropped uh globally 3% from a year earlier. Not that big of a deal if you ask me. Overseas sales slumped 7.5% but Japanese sales rose 24%.

[00:06:40]Middle East plunged over 33%.

[00:06:43]But just look, it's 31,000 vehicles.

[00:06:45]It's, yes, it's significant, but it's not still not that much. This is a big one. It fell 25% in China. This is the massive one cuz the Chinese market is enormous. And even in the United States, Toyota's biggest market, they have slipped 5%. Uh, this includes Lexus sales. Have they really slipped 5%? Um, let me look. Let me look right here. Uh, yeah, here they are. Toy Toyota North America. That's for the month, not calendar year to date. So, they're just talking about the last month of April, down 5%. So, is this this is going to continue to affect them for lots of different reasons. Chinese the Chinese market right now seems to be screwed for lots of different reasons, and I'm not going to get into it, but we're going to keep moving. Ferrari CEO defends new luch luch EV saying the customers interest is strong from existing customers and new customers. Ferrari unveiled the over $600,000 luch on Monday in Rome, triggering a flurry of criticism on social media. I I I think I made my first ever Ferrari video on the channel, okay? And it did fairly well.

[00:07:55]So, a lot of people are just like, "What the f is Ferrari doing?" All right. Uh, the design's terrible. It It looks like they built an overpriced iicar and there's no handbuilt engine that revs to 9,000 RPM or whatever. People are just totally disconnected. There's no resonance with this vehicle. Um, their CEO says they've already received bank transfers. Well, here's the thing. when you have so the clientele of Ferrari, they have so much money that $600,000 means nothing. It's pennies to these sort of people. The elite, the elite of the elite, they will buy whatever they want just to collect it. And so like it's just a different total class of people. All right? A pe a class of people that I res resonate very little with. That's why I don't make videos on Bentleys, Rolls-Royce, uh, Lamborghini.

[00:08:51]It's not that I don't like those cars.

[00:08:52]They just don't resonate with me. All right? I would rather make videos about cars that maybe you could potentially own one day, whether you buy it new or you used on the market in 5 to 10 years from now. None of these cars for 99.999% of people, okay, when I talk about these cars, I mean for the elitist cars have any sort of real impact in people's lives other than just talking on them or just gawking at them. And I don't give I mean other than talking I don't give any of these cars like they just make zero sense for the streets, especially these hypercars and supercars. It makes zero sense for the streets. They're way too powerful, way too fast, and the average driver cannot handle that on a track, on a close course, let alone on public streets.

[00:09:39]Anyways, there's my little rant on supercars and in the elite. But we've already received bank transfers. Well, again, these people control the banking systems, first of all, that that most of these Ferrari clients are. You can't even go to the Ferrari dealership and buy a Ferrari. Most of the time you have to be invited by another elite, okay, just to be in the club and then you can't modify your car either because uh Ferrari says you can't touch our cars even though you paid for it. Ferrari makes you sign waiverss that they have full control over the car in many many ways. Anyways, it's just you know Ferrari makes me sick as a company right now. All right, Mitsubishi also makes me sick for totally different reasons. They confirmed the return of the Pajaro Monto. Thank god it's finally coming.

[00:10:28]Body on frame. They finally say that it's coming. Okay. The new flagship rides on a Triton derived. Well, this was the the theory all along. Okay. It will debut in autumn of 2026. Sold as Montero in certain markets. There is no confirmation that it's coming to North America still. And I think I finally figured out why. But before I give you that answer, you know it's the Triton's made in Thailand. This is going to be made in Thailand, the new Montero Pajarro. And this vehicle is mainly going to be uh for the Southeast Asian market. Yes, it'll be available in Japan, but it seems to be for Philippines and Vietnam and Japan as priority countries. Even though if it was sold in the United States, it would move significant volume and help the brand out immensely, but they are not bringing it to America, at least the one built in Thailand. Here's what's likely to happen, and this makes a lot of sense. Also, this just come out 6 hours ago. Mitsubishi unveils Pickup Kar collaboration with Nissan. Mitsubishi will undertake a joint pickup vehicle project with Nissan in North America. In Japan, the two companies will, you know, build K mini cars and other BEVs and that's it. Okay, that's all they say.

[00:11:50]So, does this mean the frontier? Not necessarily.

[00:11:54]If it's not the frontier, it's a wasted opportunity. Okay, we know Nissan is committing hard to their Can Mississippi plant where they build the Frontier. And by the way, I do have my review done on the the competitor to the Frontier um the Ford Ranger 2.7 EcoBoost. That truck really surprised me. I liked it a lot more than I expected. Uh so wait for my review on that. Does it dethrone the Frontier is my number one pickup truck in the segment. We'll stay tuned for that. Um but Mitsubishi is just going to They should. And this is why I don't think they've announced a Pajaro for the North American market. This is what they're likely to do. This makes the most sense. Mitsubishi has zero US production. It all comes from Japan. Now that the Mirage has been discontinued, which was built in Thailand. Um, and tariffs are just it just doesn't make sense for them to send the the the Pierro uh into the United States from Thailand. So, what are they going to do?

[00:12:54]They can rebadge the Extera. They can rebadge the Frontier. Um, they can rebadge the uh the new Pathfinder body on frame. rebadge everything Nissan builds in Canton, Mississippi. So they have North American production, but also vehicles that people want to drive here in the north in North America. Body and frame pickup trucks, body and frame SUVs. It's not rocket science. Also, just rebadge the new Nissan Rogue hybrid e- power and sell it as an Outlander, Outlander Sport or something. I don't know. It's not rocket science. It really isn't. Mitsubishi is a small boat in a in caught in a hurricane in the middle of the ocean and they're they're sinking fast. Dealerships are closing. I just talked about this last week. Mitsubishi dealerships are closing. The product isn't coming. Um where is the Delica? We still don't have the Delica uh redesign plug-in hybrid. Like all their products way too old besides the Outlander.

[00:13:52]And it's just they're just the most forgetful used car dealership brand in America. Yes. Most of their dealers survive because about 80% of the cars they sell are used cars. Mitsubishi dealers. It's stupid. They're so worthless in America. It pisses me off if you guys can't tell. So they need to rebadge the Frontier. What What What was the Mitsubishi? Ah, yes. The Mitsubishi Raider. I always forget. So bring the Raider back. Man, this thing was ugly.

[00:14:23]It was a rebadged uh Dodge, right? Dodge Dakota. Um, are they going to rebadge the new Dakota? No, because they have no collaboration with Chrysler anymore. So, it's going they're going to uh just copy and paste the Frontier, which is good.

[00:14:39]More Frontiers on the market is great.

[00:14:41]And maybe they can offer better styling to the Frontier, which is taking a step back with the most recent refresh of the Nissan Frontier. So, I'm I'm all for Do you guys remember the Mighty Max as well? Uh, which was the Triton. But let's go to the the first gener. Let's Let's see here. Second generation, third generation here in North America. Oh, yes. This thing was so cool. Oh, man.

[00:15:03]This one's so cool, too. Oh my gosh.

[00:15:05]Bring bring these sort of era of trucks back. '90s Japanese trucks were just so good. So good. Oh, then look what happened. Oh gosh. It just got destroyed with design. But yeah, Peak Peak was probably second, third generation MightyMax SL L200t Triton. Uh yeah, really, really cool. They also called it the Colt. Um in South Africa, they called it the Magnum in Israel. Go figure. They name it after a gun. Mega Magnum again in Israel. Oh my gosh. So so ridiculous.

[00:15:41]So, uh, yeah, Mitsubishi, they got they got to tap into to Nissan, all right, uh, in order to to have a snowballs chance of surviving in the US. So, let's let's get into what Nissan's actually cooking with right now. So, if we look at production by country, US is cooking up 32%. In the United States, Mexico is down because they can't send as many Sentras or Versas to America anymore.

[00:16:05]China's down 10%. like Nissan overall is down 5% but their main production hubs here in the US and Japan are are cooking. So let's get into retail sales not in Japan but US. This does not include fleet sales or rental car sales or anything like that. Um so just customers sold to your you yourself neighbors real people. Versa rest in peace. Sentra up 5%. So they are sending a lot of volume still for Mexico. Um, Ultima down 40%. This vehicle was supposed to be killed off. Nissan has they say that they have a joint sedan coming. Maybe Honda builds the Ultima for them in Mary'sville Auto. Maybe like I I honestly don't know. Like they need to get rid of the Ultima and Camp Mississippi so they can build as many freaking body-on-frame vehicles as possible. So, they need to build Accords and Ultimas could be the same vehicle in the future just based off what Nissan has showed. I've seen it in their press and this would have been in this past December when they had a kind of a fastforward look. All right, anyways, let's let's keep moving. Ultima is on on live support, but that's due to in intentional Nissan Z down 58%. It's now direct order even though it's just been refreshed. uh Leaf. They're not selling any Leafs. It's like they sold nine Leafs and they just came out with this vehicle. Demand for it is so bad.

[00:17:34]Even though it's a good EV, it's a really solid EV, but demand for it is so bad. They just don't care. And they don't need to sell any of these because of the relaxed emissions regulations and cafe regulations. So, yep. Crazy.

[00:17:46]Absolutely nuts. Um they're probably sending most of these leaves to Europe.

[00:17:50]Uh that would be my guess. I don't know.

[00:17:52]I don't know where they're sending them.

[00:17:54]Okay, but I know production is not high on them to begin with. Nissan Frontier, holy smokes, up 43%.

[00:18:00]So, the Frontier right now, calendar, calendar year date is up 46%. So, they've sold 28,000 over 4 months. Let's pull up the calculator.

[00:18:10]28,363 divided by 4* 12. So, they're pacing 85,000 units. Okay. Yeah, we need to look at US sales here for uh the Frontier. It looks like they peaked in 2016 at 86,000 from what I see. So, we could have a um a record-breaking year for the Nissan Frontier, which it deserves. The Nissan Frontier is a better truck than the Tacoma. Is it a better truck than the Ranger? Well, stay tuned for my impressions. But I if it's not a better truck than the Ranger, it's still an amazing buy. It's the best buy in terms of bang for your buck on the market because the the Rangers are fairly expensive. All right, so yeah, Nissan here with the Frontier, they've sold again 28,000 of them, pacing about 85,000, if we look at Honda and the Ridgeline, which has just been end of life by the end of this year, they've sold 14,000.

[00:19:07]Uh so yeah, they've doubled they the Frontier literally out sells double the the Honda Ridgeline. Um, Nissan Pathfinder. Oh my lord. This is going to be possibly a record-breaking year for the Pathfinder, too. It's up 113% on the month. Why was the Pathfinder so far behind? Is the secret out now that the Pathfinder is not only a really good bang for your buck, but it's also a handsome and good-looking vehicle that gets the job done for families, and it's really affordable, and it's got a V6.

[00:19:34]Like, it's a really solid car, and it's fairly fun to drive, too. So, 113% positive. All right. on the year it's 60% positive. So they're pacing 40,000 over four months. So what is that?

[00:19:47]10,000 months. So they're pacing 120,000 units. 120,000 units would be a record smashing year. Last year they sold a little over 101,000 units. Um so the Pathfinder, even though you could say, oh it's, you know, even they just refreshed it, but you could say it's, oh, it's like there's nothing special.

[00:20:06]That's true. Nothing too special about it, but everything it does, it does well and it's affordable and people need more affordable family haulers. Okay, the Grand Highlanders ridiculously expensive, hard to get. The Koreans have really good three row family vehicles, don't get me wrong with the Tellide and Palisade, uh, but their base engines, well, some people don't want a turbo, some people uh, don't want a uh, an underpowered V6. The Nissan Pathfinder V6 is really stout. It's really good.

[00:20:33]Um, if you guys just saw the Honda Pilot, the Honda Pilot that I reviewed, uh, it's so mediocre. It's so bland. The the pass the Pathfinder is a more engaging vehicle to drive and they killed the steering on the new Passport.

[00:20:47]So, the Passport has So, sorry, why am I saying Passport? I mean Pilot. I mean Pilot. Sorry, but they they share the same. So, the Pilot has sold 42,000 units for the year, 11,000 for the month. Let's go back to Pathfinder.

[00:21:01]11,786.

[00:21:03]Did it just Yes, it just beat the pilot in sales for the month of April. Okay, I know we're almost into June. We don't have sales for the month of May yet, but that's why I'm covering this. So, it's possible that the Pathfinder could beat out, especially with this sort of momentum, it could beat out the ne the the Honda Pilot. Pathfinder and Pilot is going to be a fun head-to-head race this year. All right. Um, Armada, it's actually down. It's up on the year 9% down 11% on the month. I love the Armada. We saw a Nismo the other day on the streets and it's just like shoot I I want to be in that. I want to drive it.

[00:21:41]So it's I I have driven it but it's so much fun. It's so cool. Arya, rest in peace. The rest of the world got a refresh. We did not. What about Infiniti? All right. All these vehicles are dead. They're twocar lineup here.

[00:21:53]QX60 uh 65. No sales recorded, but that was for the month of April. Well, I know they're actually um available now. Uh let me show you. QX65. There are 46 in my area. Um are are we seeing discounts?

[00:22:08]There should be because it's a terrible value. Uh yikes. Yikes. Yikes. Here we go. Uh nope, not a discount yet. So, just wait for the unlike if you like the design of this or the spaciousness of it, just wait till they're, you know, 6 months on on on the lot and no interest on these things. you'll be a buy be able to buy them for 10 15 grand off. I'm I'm telling you this is I I would rather have a Pathfinder than this. I would rather have Well, yeah. We'll just leave it there. Okay. We don't need to to bury this car anymore than I already did. I think I give it a preliminary review.

[00:22:44]QX65. Here it is. It got a B score, but that's I I got to spend more time with it. That's a pre preliminary review, but it's it's low B's. Okay. So, not not that great of a vehicle. Um, it's comfortable and it's pretty and whatever. It's just it needs a V6. If it had a V6, it would probably put it into excellent purchase.

[00:23:07]So, all right. Um, let's get back on track. Um, QX80 sales are good. Uh, up 11% down 21% on the year, but they're kind of rebounding. So, QX80, um, you know, I would rather have an Armada. That's just me. Give me an Armada Nismo or Pro 4X or a Platinum Armada. Take it over the QX8. But the QX80 is still an amazing luxury vehicle.

[00:23:32]Amazing.

[00:23:33]Amazing. QX60 is not. All right. Give me a Pathfinder every day of the week. So, there you have it. Um, I'm going to end it there. Thank you guys for watching.

[00:23:42]It's just crazy. Lexus killing off their EVs and they're just going to multipathway approach. It doesn't make sense for the traditional automakers to invest boatloads of money into an inflexible system. It absolutely tanked Honda to develop an a a system that only can accommodate one type of powertrain and that's battery electric. Honda completely screwed themselves. Okay.

[00:24:10]Toyota will continue to to develop giga casting. They can still giga cast front and rear ends of the vehicle which improves efficiency, improves manufacturing costs. It's not good for repairability or insurance, okay?

[00:24:26]Because you just total the vehicle. Um, unless Toyota can find a way with their better engineers and, you know, their more delicate development of vehicles that they can find a way to efficiently and and easily dismantle these cars with mega casted or giga casted pieces and just swap them in and out like Lego pieces. And that would actually reduce costs. Go figure. Reduce costs. Uh, are just a dead end. It's a dead end for investment. Okay. if you go all in on it as a traditional OEM. Look how much even Rivian is struggling. Lucid is struggling. Tesla's not doing hot.

[00:25:05]They're just kind of like hanging on.

[00:25:07]They don't have any new product coming out Tesla. They're they're pretty much a dead end. They've just like uh we'll use, you know, they can't they're not making tons of money off of the EV credits anymore. Uh so they just took advantage from the government doing that. All right, but that was probably a plan all along. Let me know what you guys think of today's content and stay tuned for more. Got a lot coming down the hatch. I have a few more Lexus ES videos. I I'm actually reviewing the new Mazda CX-5. Lot of thoughts about that car. Does so many things so well.

[00:25:39]Another thing so badly. Okay. I'm also reviewing an Escalade IQL.

[00:25:45]That thing is like a an electric barge from space. I it's such a weird massive in some ways actually really impressive but in other ways like it's just doesn't doesn't resonate with me that vehicle.

[00:25:59]But there are some things that are fantastic about the I IQ Escalade. Um but I got to shut down. I can talk all day. Thank you guys. Have a good one and peace.