Lexus pick-up truck a possibility if customers demand it, but only as an EV

Toyota’s luxury counterpart Lexus is never any longer imminently finding out whether it must free up a top class Toyota Hilux / Tacoma pick-up truck adaptation.

But the build’s president Takashi Watanabe says that the electrical platforms the build is playing a aim in increasing at indicate would possibly give a boost to an EV pick-up in future.

“In the intervening time, we’re going to’t allege we’re going to be increasing a Lexus pick-up truck. Lexus has a certain aim to play as a build when when when put next with Toyota,” Watanabe acknowledged.

“We are playing the aim of driving battery EV [development] and the longer term of carmaking in keeping with battery EVs.”

Customer needs will dictate future Lexus EV lineup

But the Lexus chief acknowledged that he’d additionally been tasked with responding to an increasing form of various customer needs – and hinted that there are few limits on what segments that future Lexus gadgets would possibly play in.

“We desire to answer to diversifying values of alternative people and the field, and we desire as a potential to supply as many alternate solutions as that that you can perhaps perhaps deem of into the longer term.

“If there’s a solid want from buyers and drivers of the Lexus build to free up, or start, a Lexus pick-up truck, that will be an probability. It’s far a subject of probability in future and we won’t hiss a Lexus pick-up truck – nonetheless as of now, now we absorb no such dialogue.”

If Lexus entered the lush pick-up house with an EV ute, it would possibly perhaps mainly deal with the GMC Hummer EV, Rivian R1T and impending Tesla Cybertruck in the US market.

None of these autos are sold in Australia.

Lexus is a specialist in luxury off-roaders

It’d be remembered that Lexus is, essentially, a specialist in luxurious, dedicated off-roaders.

The marque has sold the Lexus LX – an adaptation of the fat-size Toyota Land Cruiser with finally the identical level of potential – repeatedly since 1996.

In 2024, Lexus will free up its smaller GX four-wheel force (review right here) to Australia for the first time. The GX is in keeping with Toyota’s 250-series Land Cruiser Prado and packs a two-velocity transfer case and substantial off-side street prowess.

Combining leather-basically based- and wood-lined cabins with serious articulation and low-vary is an weird and wonderful specialisation of Lexus – rivals luxuriate in BMW and Audi absorb no match for the GX or LX.

Mercedes-Benz forces investors into the rather more costly G-Class to retain out the same capabilities, whereas Lexus quality has on the total been greater than in competing Land Rover gadgets.

So, maybe a Lexus version of the Toyota Hilux, Tacoma or Tundra isn’t so unfamiliar.

The odd landscape of top class pick-up trucks

In Australia, the Toyota ute vary is in the intervening time capped by the rough-and-ready $73,990 Hilux GR Sport, though the build will add the US-constructed Tundra pick-up to its lineup in 2024.

The landscape is far more absorbing in the US.

The American market has seen a decision of luxury pick-up truck entrants nonetheless all absorb failed to search out extensive commercial success.

Cadillac sold an ‘EXT’ ute version of its Escalade luxury SUV from 2001-2013, whereas Ford marketed the Lincoln Blackwood – a greater-discontinue version of the Ford F-150 – for correct two years in the early 2000s.

The closest thing to a luxury build promoting a pick-up truck steadily is the highest class-pitched GMC in the United States, which affords midsize Canyon and successfully-organized Sierra gadgets with just a shrimp greater-discontinue match-outs than their Chevrolet counterparts.

In many solutions, top-of-the-vary versions of pick-up trucks from mainstream manufacturers luxuriate in Chevrolet, Ford and Ram satisfy requirements for a leather-basically based-lined workhorse, whereas Toyota sells a lush Tundra Capstone variant for roughly $120,000 AUD.