Toyota And Tesla To Make Electric RAV4

Toyota and Tesla have been discussing a partnership and the two companies have now signed an agreement to make an electric version of the Toyota RAV4. This will be the second generation EV RAV4, the first generation EV RAV4 being a limited production that was discontinued in 2003.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors Inc. will be delivering a fleet of vehicles sometime this year so Toyota can begin testing them. Toyota will also work with Tesla on manufacturing processes and the partnership to deliver electric vehicles by 2012 will be well underway.

This type of partnership puts Toyota and Tesla at an advantage because each company can bring specific engineering values when collaborating and allow the relationship to potentially grow into other vehicle models as well as Toyota’s market in Japan.

Tesla Motors will need to grow substantially to support the demand for this one partnership, let alone their own vehicles – the Tesla Roadster. This is great news for Tesla, and should translate into more jobs here in the US should they keep the bulk of the manufacturing here in the US.

For the rest of this press release – follow this link to go to the Toyota Newsroom

Tagged as: electric, rav4, tesla, toyota and tesla