Tesla Model Y engineering gets praised by Toyota after teardown

While Toyota has been considered the state-of-art legacy vehicle manufacturer for a while now, its own engineers took apart a Model Y recently, and were impressed by the lack of redundant components. According to one anonymous Toyota executive, "taking the skin off the Model Y, it was truly a work of art." "It’s unbelievable," he added, as Toyota is trying to determine how best to attack the exploding market for electric vehicles after a few years of being brought to the fold kicking and screaming.

While Toyota's first EVs are built on the e-TNGA modular platform adapted from its renowned legacy vehicles, after seeing the Model Y inside another exec said that Toyota would "need a new platform designed as a blank sheet" since what Tesla is doing is apparently "a whole different manufacturing philosophy."

With the resignation of its long-time Chairman, Toyota indicates that it perfectly understands the challenge, and that's precisely what it would be doing, a new platform designed for electric vehicles from the ground-up. It has pledged to debut it with Lexus in the lead. The first Lexus built on the new purely EV platform won't hit the market before 2026, while Toyota will be satisfying the demand for its electric vehicles with existing offerings like the 2023 Lexus RZ 450e that starts from $59,650 in the US.

Sandy Munro is of the opinion that Toyota can actually pull it off, as he said he has seen the Japanese "elephant" do it so many times before, crushing his main rivals in the process. It remains to be seen if Toyota will be able to catch up to Tesla and the others, and time will be the judge if its hybrid strategy to offer different vehicles for different markets has been the right way all along.

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