NOVI, MI – Auto industry insiders may occasionally lose sight of the fact the average new-vehicle buyer is not yet fully versed on all the ins and outs of battery-electric vehicles.
Toyota discovered as much with the results of a recent survey it commissioned.
As a result, this year the automaker is aiming to prioritize education on BEVs, as well as other electrified vehicle (EV) types, to help alleviate any consumer concerns.
The overarching sentiment it sees from consumers regarding BEVs is around the lifestyle aspect, Imad Zahid, AI design engineering manager-Toyota North America, tells the audience at the recent AutoTech 2025 conference here. “Customers have a lot of questions, a lot of concern around (the issue of), ‘Will an electrified vehicle fit my lifestyle? Will it fit what I want to do? Can I go off-road? Can I go racing?’”
While Zahid is confident that the latter questions will be answered as Toyota expands its electric propulsion systems into more segments, making trail- and track-driving no issue, other key questions consumers want answers to as shown by the survey include: How long will BEVs take to charge, what kind of networks are out there, how much will it cost to replace the battery and is making the transition from an internal-combustion-engine (ICE) vehicle to a BEV “worth it”?
“That’s what it all boils down to is, ‘Is it worth me changing my lifestyle, changing my cost of ownership, changing my experience with an automobile, to move to an electrified vehicle?’ That really sums up the problem we’ve got ahead of us,” the Toyota executive tells the audience.
Speaking to WardsAuto after his presentation, Zahid (pictured below) says Toyota will take a multipronged approach to education to ease these customer concerns, relying on its dealers, as well as public hands-on marketing activities with BEVs (such as ride-and-drives), to teach car buyers what they need to know. However, he says the automaker’s approach will have to be more nuanced than one might expect.
“There are preconceived notions with BEVs that didn’t exist with ICE (vehicles),” he says, adding the transition from ICE to BEV models comes with a different type of anxiety or “conversion apprehension” than what consumers felt 120 years ago in the switch from bicycles and horses to automobiles.
Zahid tells the audience one area that likely needs further explanation for many consumers is public charging, as he says some potential buyers may be perplexed by figuring out the type of charging (Level 1, Level 2 or DC fast) or charging network to use for their BEV, as well as whether an adapter to charge will be necessary due to multiple U.S. charging standards.
Toyota, the longtime No.1 seller of hybrids globally and in the U.S., has been slower to introduce BEVs than other legacy automakers, but it soon will raise its number of all-electric offerings.
The Toyota brand recently announced two new U.S. BEV models, the bZ Woodland, a variant of the recently refreshed bZ4X midsize CUV, as well as the C-HR compact BEV CUV, both due in 2026.
The automaker’s Lexus luxury brand also will field more BEVs as it seeks to transition its models to 100% electric propulsion by 2035. The current Lexus RZ gets a refresh for 2026 like its bZ4X cousin, while production models based on the LF-ZC car and LF-ZL crossover concepts are due in 2026 and in 2027, respectively.
