Toyota’s New $18,070 bZ5 Launches in China

Last Updated on: 14th June 2025, 04:40 am

Toyota has been one of the slowest legacy automakers to seriously start the transition to fully electric vehicles. That’s weird since Toyota led the way with hybrids, but it also makes sense for that reason — leaders of a tech transition are often laggards in the next one, as they try to cling onto glory and market share in the industry that’s being left behind. Anyway, in China, you really can’t get by any longer unless you get into the EV market. Plugin vehicles now account for about half of new vehicle sales in the country.

So, Toyota now has the fully electric bZ5 on the market. Naturally, though, the company had to lean on a true market leader to make this happen. Toyota went all the way to the top and got batteries for the bZ5 from BYD. And the coupe SUV has now launched.

The Toyota bZ5 has a starting price of just RMB 129,800 ($18,090). Other versions of the car with a few more bells and whistles cost RMB 139,800 ($19,490) or RMB 159,800 ($22,280). The bZ5 could really end up doing well, as it is a competitive offering and the Toyota brand is still strong overall.

The Toyota bZ5 also has a peak motor output of 200W, and can thus get from 0 to 50 km/h in just 3.4 seconds. The base version comes with a 65.28 kWh LFP battery, uses 13.5 kWh per 100 kilometers, and gets 550 kilometers (340 miles) of range on the CLTC testing cycle. If you want to pay a bit more, you can get the 73.984 kWh battery pack with 630 kilometers (390 miles) of range.

It’s a decent offering, especially from an industry laggard, but it is powered by BYD batteries after all. Let’s see if it can break into the top 20 in the hyper-competitive Chinese EV market.