After letting it be seen in the Shanghai Auto Show At the beginning of last year, Toyota just made official the bZ7its electric flagship more than five meters long. What is striking here is not the car itself, that too, but the technology that gives life to both its software and its drive train. Technology that… is not from Toyota.
The car. bZ7, this is the name that Toyota has given to an electric sedan that embodies the latest technology available for this segment. The summary is simple.
- 5.1 meters long.
- 1.9 meters wide.
- LPF (lithium ferrophosphate) type batteries of BYD origin.
- Autonomy of between 600 and 800 km (according to the Chinese cycle, CLTC) depending on version.
- Operating system HarmonyOS.
- Huawei DriveOne system (electrical system, engine, car architecture…)
What’s Huawei looking like here?. In 2020, Huawei confirmed its commitment to the electric car with DriveOneits first electric motor. Specifically, we are talking about a control unit composed of a motor, reducer, converter, integrated charger, power distribution unit and battery control unit.
It thus allows this Toyota bZ7 to have a power of 278 HP and a maximum speed limited to 180 km/h. All this in a much more compact platform compared to the traditional ones used in this type of vehicles.
The interior. As if it were not enough to power the engine of this luxury sedan, the cabin has a 15.6-inch floating central screen. The size of a generous laptop.
The operating system that gives it life is HarmonyOS, a platform thatthe company develops for the world of electric cars, smartphones, tablets, computers and peripherals of all kinds.
The alliance. That Huawei and Toyota develop a car together is something quite recent. The Japanese company announced that, on cars destined for China, it would cooperate with Huawei. Toyota began to lose steam both in global sales and in China, where it fell 6.9% in 2024.
After three consecutive years of losing sales in China, it decided with one of the manufacturers that today has more muscle when it comes to developing complete platforms for electric cars.
Beyond Apple and Google. Chinese manufacturers like Huawei are betting on a solution at the operating system level that is much more integrated than what Apple and Google have been trying to do for years. Unlike Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, integrate the system (in this case HarmonyOS, but also in cases like that of HyperOS), allows complete control of the vehicle from it. It does not require a smartphone, it is updated via OTA, it is based on its own code…
It’s something similar to what Google is trying with Android Automotivea complete system but with little adoption, and what Apple promised with CarPlay Ultracurrently reserved only for luxury vehicles.
Image | toyota
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