The crew at Toyota loves to tease and has dropped an artsy rear-view of an upcoming new model in an attempt to generate interest (and media coverage, which it has.)
There are a few clues in the photo that narrow things down: it is either an SUV or a pickup, and the LED lightbar that spans the width of the rear either marks the top of the tailgate, if a pickup, or the middle of the liftgate if an SUV.
Toyota already has a plethora of SUVs and a couple of pickups, so the only reason to introduce a new one is to fill a previously unfilled slot in the lineup and/or introduce a new powertrain.
Toyota’s got ICEs up the wazoo in its pickup and SUV families.
Gotta be Electric
So we’re voting for an electric or plug-in hybrid powertrain. for the new Toyota.
As to vehicle type. If it is all-electric, it probably isn’t a pickup – the track record there hasn’t been all that good – certainly not for all-electric pickups such as the recently canceled Ford F150 Lightning. It could, however, be an EREV, or extended range EV, which uses an internal combustion engine as a generator to supply power for an electric propulsion system. Ford reportedly is doing that for the Lightning replacement, and Ram is introducing an EREV version of the Ram 1500 – called the Ram 1500 REV – after canceling plans for an all-electric version.
Yes, GM (Silverado EV, Sierra EV and Hummer EV) and Rivian (R1T) still sell electric pickups, and Volkswagen AG’s U.S.-based Scout Motors is planning one (the Terra) as a 2028 model. but that’s probably sufficient to meet what demand there is and planners at Toyota probably know that.
Soooo…will the new Toyota tbe a new electrified SUV, either BEV or EREV?
If so, it likely will be aimed at a segment in which Toyota needs to replace an aging model. And that, by process of elimination (bolstered by loads of speculation out there, especially from the buff books) would be the Highlander, which hasn’t had a re-do in six years while everything else in Toyota’s SUV and crossover stable has been renewed or updated fairly recently.
With an electric Highlander and the conventional lCE and gas-elective hybrid versions of the slightly larger Grand Highlander in its catalog, Toyota would have the bases covered in the large non-luxury 3-row SUV segment. A Highlander BEV also would also be direct competition for the Hyundai Ioniq 9 and Kia EV9 3-row electric SUVs.
This might not be the clincher, but a patent filed in China for a fifth generation Toyota Highlander reportedly was accompanied by a rear-view sketch – downloaded by the Burlappcar.com website back in 2023 – that’s remarkably similar to the image of the upcoming new Toyota in the just-released tease.
It’s likely we’ll know more quite soon. Toyota’s practice has been to show a production version of a new model fairly quickly after releasing teaser pics.