Most recently, Toyota filed a trademark application for the 4Active with the U.S. Patent Office. Judging from the naming, this may mean that Toyota will launch a brand new SUV.
According to Toyota’s plan, it will cooperate with Mazda in North America to launch a brand new cross-border vehicle, thus supplementing Toyota’s product line in the North American market.
Judging from the naming of 4Active, this new car is likely to form a high-low matching product sequence with 4Runner in the North American market. It also fills the segment between the Toyota C-HR and the RAV4.
At the New York International Auto Show in 2017, Toyota officially released the FT-4X concept car, which showed off its enhanced off-road performance and the image of a hard-core off-road vehicle, and attracted the attention of the market at that time. However, later this concept car has nothing to say. The high probability event is that Toyota has readjusted the positioning of the new car.
Combined with 4Runner’s hard-core off-road vehicle positioning, Toyota’s brand new crossover vehicle is likely to become a crossover product that emphasizes off-road passing performance. In terms of platform, the new car will also be based on Toyota’s GA-C platform.
It is obvious that the SUV market is ushering in a round of differentiated changes focused on enhancing off-road passing performance. In addition to Toyota, Ford will also launch a small off-road SUV based on a transverse engine platform in the future.
Perhaps, in the future, as we expected, SUVs will regain their off-road characteristics.
