Toyota BZ3c: A Sleek New Electric Crossover Made With BYD's Help

Toyota BZ3c Leak

The Toyota BZ3c was unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show, but a Chinese regulatory body has leaked more details before it goes on sale.

• The Toyota BZ3c is currently only planned for China, and will be made in FAW-Toyota's Tianjin factory.
• The BZ3c's motor and battery both come from BYD.
• It is expected to enter production before the end of 2024.

A little birdie told me that automakers both inside and out of China detest the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In case you don't know, the MIIT is one of the last steps for certification before any vehicle is approved for sale in China. Unfortunately for the automakers, all the specs and unflattering passport-like photos they have to submit for this are public information in China, making the whole operation basically Leak Central. It looks like the Toyota BZ3c is the latest victim of the MIIT.

Now, I’m lucky to have seen the BZ3c in person, albeit in its thinly-veiled preproduction concept guise at this year’s Beijing Auto Show. I thought the BZ3c generally looked well-proportioned and stylish as if it were the logical progression of a full-EV version of the swanky new Prius.

When I saw the BZ3c in person, the two cars felt about the same size. However, dimensionally the BZ3c’s 188.1-inch length is more than a little longer than the 181.1 inches of the current Prius.

These patent-style photos aren’t all that flattering, though. It doesn’t appear that anything on the design has changed since the Beijing Auto Show, but the white paint, ugly wheel covers and lack of privacy glass have made the car look somewhat ungainly. The harsh, matter-of-fact lighting in the room and the focal length of the camera ain’t helping, either.

The MIIT says the BZ3c will have an LFP battery from BYD, although it didn’t say how large the battery will be. The motor itself is also from BYD. It is a 268-horsepower unit powering the front wheels. This model will made at the FAW-Toyota plant in Tianjin, alongside another Toyota BZ car we don’t get here: the BZ3 sedan.

Although this car is the result of a tie-up with FAW, BYD and Toyota, it feels like it's far more related to other Toyotas in the stable. At the same show, Toyota showed off the near-production version of the Toyota BZ3x.

At first, that SUV fooled me, I simply assumed it was a subcompact or Toyota Corolla Cross-sized EV crossover to slot underneath the RAV4-sized BZ4x. In reality, it didn’t share much with the BZ4X or BZ3 sedan at all. It was a restyled (or rebranded) version of the all-new GAC Aion V, a small MPV-like crossover also released on the same show.

The BZ3c’s platform hasn’t been announced, but if it’s built on the same line as the BZ3 sedan, it will likely use the same e-TNGA platform found on Toyota’s other ground-up EVs. This means that it could potentially see release outside of China, albeit probably not with the BYD battery or motor due to tariffs on EVs that have too many Chinese parts.

Never say never, though. Maybe Toyota will figure out a way to manufacture a tariff-friendly version of the BZ3c for markets in North America or Europe.

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