For Toyota to jump back into compact pickups, it would require its entry in the segment to be a net generator of CAFE and greenhouse fuel credits. Which is in aspect because the automaker’s human body-on-frame lineup is only halfway by way of its first redesign in 14 many years, with the Tundra heading on sale late final 12 months and the Sequoia established to appear in dealerships this summer months, leaving its quantity chief, the Tacoma, on the sidelines till 2023 and the 4Runner SUV on deck in 2024. People extended-in-the-tooth styles have weighed on Toyota’s CAFE averages as time passed and laws tightened.
Ericksen claimed the incentive for automakers to boost the footprint of their light-weight trucks is “form of a weird scenario. It’s not the most effective detail for the environment, but it is the ideal thing if your organization happens to promote genuinely huge trucks.” Still, he claimed for Toyota to soar again into compact pickups, any entry would have to be even bigger than the small Toyota pickups from the 1980s or ’90s — which include his have 1982 Toyota 4×4, with its incredibly thin doorways and single-row cabin so little he consistently hits his head.
“That’s in all probability not what we will need. We most likely have to have a little something a small more spacious on the inside of, extra of an SUV-with-a-mattress principle, so it is actually dialing in,” Ericksen claimed. “And the extra that Ford sells, frankly, the extra that Hyundai sells, the much more we will be ready to get great analysis on who these consumers are, why they want this automobile, and we’ll see if that’s the space that we want to enter into.”