Soon enough, buying an electric Toyota will no longer mean having to solve for b, Z or X.
At its annual Kenshiki Forum event in Brussels last week, Toyota officials announced a plan to walk away from its confusing and often-criticized naming scheme for electric cars, which has yielded models with names like bZ4X, bZ3 and bZ3X. Instead, new EVs will be named after “existing and familiar Toyota nameplates,” officials said.
“This approach will be expanded as all the EVs to come will become, of course, an integral part of our Toyota lineup,” said Andrea Carlucci, the director of marketing and product development at Toyota Motor Europe.
While no Toyota officials at the event would confirm exactly what new models would arrive with this new naming system, they indicated a desire to lean on the company’s existing brand equity, not unlike the two generations of RAV4 EVs.
Photo by: Patrick George
2026 Toyota bZ4X Live Photos
But Carlucci hinted at the way things might go with two new and upcoming EV models. One is the Urban Cruiser, which is now a small electric crossover sold in Europe with a nameplate that’s been used off and on for two decades and evokes the famous Land Cruiser brand. The other is the new C-HR+, a more medium-sized crossover that uses the same name as a hybrid model but is a completely unrelated vehicle.
Masaya Uchiyama, the bZ4X’s chief engineer, told InsideEVs that the decision was part of the mainstreaming of all-electric vehicles.
“We used ‘bZ4X’ for the name because it was new,” Uchiyama said. “Now, BEVs [battery electric vehicles] are becoming more popular, a more usual car. BEVs were more for innovators and early adopters. But now, BEVs are for ‘early majorities’. We think it’s time to have a usual name, or familiar name, for the BEVs, because this [type of] vehicle is not a special vehicle anymore.”
Uchiyama is correct on that front. EVs made up about one in 10 new car sales in the U.S. in 2024, a record result. In Europe, the numbers are even higher, with around 15% of new car sales being electric in the European Union in January. Those numbers go significantly higher depending on what European country you’re in; in Belgium, EVs make up nearly 30% of the new car market, while in Norway—where the bZ4X has been a consistent top-selling vehicle—EVs are basically 90% of new car sales.
Toyota has been historically reluctant to embrace fully electric vehicles and has instead leaned on its “multi-pathway” approach to offering many different types of vehicles. Yet the continued growth of the EV sector, especially in Europe, has led the world’s largest automaker to step up its game there. Toyota intends to unveil three more all-electric models by the end of 2026; one is presumed to be a pickup truck, and another could be a production version of the Land Cruiser Se concept.
Photo by: Patrick George
Automakers have often struggled with what to name their next-generation cars as EVs go more mainstream, and could one day completely replace gas-powered cars in many lineups. While some have opted to give their EVs unique names—the Kia EV3 or Hyundai Ioniq 5, just to name a few—others have been reluctant to abandon decades of brand equity and easy recognition. Audi, for example, recently abandoned a convoluted strategy where EVs would be even-numbered cars like A4 and Q6 while gas-powered cars would use odd numbers.
On Toyota’s end, it’s unlikely that many people will miss the “Beyond Zero 4 Crossover,” especially when the vehicle is a modern electric RAV4 in all but name. And opening the future up to electric versions of the Sienna, Tacoma and Corolla would be a much more enticing strategy for getting fans of those cars to move on from gasoline.
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