What's greener than a BEV? A 20 year old car - Toyota is crazy enough to want to sell less cars - offers upgradable cars

Today, we are told that if we want to go green and be kind to the environment, we should buy a battery electric vehicle (BEV). A battery EV does not emit climate-warming CO2, is quiet and can be charged from the convenience of your home, while you’re sleeping. Why would you want to keep making detours to a petrol station?

But it’s not that simple – while a BEV is clean, it takes far more energy and mining of natural resources to build one BEV than a conventional combustion engine car.

Also read: Toyota builds its cars to last 20 years but this Prius is the first to allow used car buyers to enjoy factory-approved upgrades

BEV-only manufacturer Polestar’s own data show that depending on the manufacturing plant’s energy source, a BEV Polestar 2 needs to drive between 40,000 km to 110,000 km before it clears their carbon debt,versus a regular combustion engine Volvo XC40 (Source: Life cycle assestment 202 - Carbon footprint of Polestar 2 variants).

The true green solution is to buy fewer cars and use more public transport. Fewer cars mean less resources used, less demand to clear green spaces to build parkings / roads, less CO2 emitted to generate electricity, but few car companies will want to say this because it’s bad for business.

But what if there is a car company brave (or silly) enough to do exactly just that?

The evergreen car

In comes Toyota’s Upgrade Ready Design (URD). First introduced on the 2023 Prius, URD allows future hardware and functions to be retrofitted. The future-proofing is achieved by anticipating the work required for upgrades, all done very early on, at the design and development stage of the car.

Almost all leading brands’ BEVs support upgradable software but few allow hardware upgrades, because why would they want to give you a reason to keep your cars longer and not buy a new one?

Also read: Toyota to launch 4 new hybrid models in Thailand this year; reiterates multi-pathway strategy for ASEAN

Allowing a car to receive factory-approved upgrades, will ensure it’s better equipped, safe, and as efficient as other new cars. The latter two are the main reasons why we are told to junk old cars and buy newer ones.

But you might be cynical – this coming from a car company that sold 10.5 million cars in 2022, more than any other. In there lies the power of Toyota’s paradigm shift from being a car company to being a kaizen company centered around mobility.

Also read: Toyota is quietly showing how everyone is missing the point about carbon neutrality

In Akio Toyoda’s own words, “We call ourselves an automobile company, but in reality, we are a new car company. To be worthy of the automobile company name, we have to look at the 20-year life of our cars."

"As we transform ourselves into a mobility company, we need to figure out how to generate value across this lifespan.” That was the challenge of the URD program.

How do you account for technology that doesn’t exist yet?

Dubbed the 'Next Generation Used Car' project, over 2 years a small skunkworks group led by Project GM Nariaki Amano how to upgrade an older car. He said, “Until now, our job entailed planning, designing, and building new cars, then shipping them off. We had no way of upgrading our customers’ vehicles after they were sold.”

As their first task, the small team set out to retrofit a sunroof onto a used Alphard, which proved much harder than expected.

Project General Manager Yukinori Ii said, "Only when we got to work did we realise how much effort was necessary.”

Installing the sunroof on an existing car required modifications, such as making unplanned holes in the body and installing new parts.

The project is described to have failure after failure, but eventually, lessons learned culminated in the Japan-market-specific Kinto Unlimited’s Upgrade Ready Design program.

Retrofit additional upgrades as your car ages

The first set of these upgrades is now ready for the 2023 Prius. Offering previously unheard-of retrofit packages such as The Advanced Park feature (with remote function) of the Toyota Teammate ADAS suite.

In addition, seven items such as a Blind Spot Monitor, Panoramic View Monitor, Parking Support Brake (rear pedestrian detection), and Steering Wheel Heater can also be fitted to the Prius Grade U in Japan.

These are some of the upgrade packages available for the 2023 Prius via the Kinto Unlimited program in Japan:

• Toyota Teammate - Advanced Park (with remote function): JPY 96,800 (~ RM 3,155)
• ADAS Package - BSM, upgraded Toyota Safety Sense and rear AEB: JPY 329,560 (~ RM 10,740)
• Parking Assist - Panoramic view monitor: JPY 121,000 (~ RM 3,944)

Toyota is already considering adding expanding the upgrade menu to include large-screen display audio, heated seats, seat ventilation, and synthetic leather seats to meet customer needs.

Customers in Japan can either pay a lump sum or over time through their Kinto subscription. Although only in its first phase with the Prius, there is already interest in this project for other cars and overseas plants.

Conclusion

With the 2023 Prius' upgrade-ready design, it is possible that a vehicle sold new today will offer all the functionality of newer cars 10, 15 even 20 years down the line.

Also read: Germany and Switzerland now admit Toyota is right - engines not the enemy, carbon is, EV-only solution is too narrow

In many ways, whilst it could be bad for business, it's an exponentially greener solution than simply buying a new EV that barely repays its carbon debt before being declared outdated and binned in favour of something newer.

In there lies the next revolution of the Prius and URD program, engineering a car that not only lasts but remains up to date throughout its lifespan.