The cheapest Toyota EV just went on sale for under $20,000, but good luck getting it
The cheapest Toyota EV just went on sale for under $20,000, but good luck getting it
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China's internal EV war heats up as officials at BYD, Huawei trade criticisms
A battle over electric vehicles is unfolding in China, with officials at rival brands BYD and Huawei exchanging some verbal barbs.
Straight Arrow News
When you're able to offer an EV with 267 miles of driving range, an impressive driver-assist suite, and decent styling for under $20,000, you better believe it's going to be popular. That's exactly what the 2026 Toyota bZ3X did in China, and the launch was so well received that it crashed Toyota-GACs order servers for some time. Let's look at what we're missing.
The bZ3X — known as the Bozhi 3X, or Platinum 3X when translated — is a small all-electric crossover SUV made for the Chinese market through the Toyota-GAC (Guangzhou Automobile Group Company) joint venture. It had a soft pre-launch in December where it was offered for around $14,000, but in March Toyota officially opened its order books for its cheapest EV in China. It was so cheap that it secured over 10,000 orders in just one hour and overwhelmed their servers. To put that into perspective, according to Electrek, the BYD Atto 3 is similarly sized but is nearly $1,000 more expensive to start.
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There are two models with two battery pack sizes and five trim options available for the bZ3X. The base model without any full self-driving technology and other complicated ADAS features from Nvidia called the Nvidia Drive AGX Orin X, starts at 109,800 yuan or around $15,000. If you opt in for the Nvidia technology, add another 40,000 yuan for around $20,500. The standard battery pack is the 430 Air, a 50.03 kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pack good for up to 267 miles of range. The larger '610 Max' offers a battery with up to 370 miles of range with its 67.92 kWh LFP pack.
Inside is a bit of a home-away-from-home design that's very popular in China. All seats fold flat to offer up to 10 feet of nearly flat surface to lounge in. The 14.6-inch infotainment screen offers massive views for this price point, but the instrument panel consists of an 8.8-inch digital display. It's also a very simple dashboard layout with no other buttons save for the start and hazard light switches, but the HVAC vents are discrete.
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As it's a joint venture build with GAC for China, it's unlikely that it will ever be brought over due to the Biden-era rules still in place effectively banning Chinese-built vehicles in the U.S. Even if they were to overcome those rules, the current — and in constant flux — tariff situation would make the bZ3X far more expensive to sell here after taking importation into account. It would not cost $15,000, in other words, a shame considering one of the barriers to entry to EVs is their often richer pricing versus equivalent gas-powered offerings.
That said, in 2025, pricing in general represents a huge hurtle to new vehicle ownership, regardless of what power source you go with. Currently, the cheapest vehicle on sale here in the U.S. is the Nissan Versa S at $18,330, but who knows how long the Versa will continue to be produced with everything going on at Nissan, along with the industry's drift away from small, affordable vehicles (the subcompact segment that the Versa competes in, after all, is down to only two models — soon to be one).
Above those, no new vehicle starts at under $20,000, with the next cheapest being the 2025 Chevrolet Trax at $21,495. If Toyota could find a way to bring over the bZ3X or something like it, it could be a huge win, but pulling off such a cheap price outside of the Chinese market would be nearly impossible.
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