I see your point and I agree. There are more parts. That means more points of failure. That leads to customers changing their vehicles more quickly.

On the second part. With the bz4x, BYD is not yet involved. BYD gave them the sedan which they will re-badge as a Toyota. For the bz4x they have used Panasonic batteries and motors from other sources. So it is Toyota’s EV right now. But I believe the way they have been shouting their propaganda against EVs they have to show resistance before jumping completely into the EV market. I believe this is just for show. EV tech is now tried and trusted. This level of caution was over ten years ago.

There’s a deep sense in preferring hybrids: planned obsolescence. According to complexity, hybrid > ICE > EV. There are more parts in ICE requiring more frequent maintenance and spare parts. But the hybrids are far more complex. They have far more parts, and once the battery is dead, the engine doesn’t even start. So people who are thinking that a few years down the lane they can convert their hybrid vehicle into an ICE vehicle are out of luck.

Greater number of spares also means more things that can go bad. Greater difficulty for the stockists to keep inventory of all that. This means an early demise for a car that just broke 3 or 4 parts out of the thousands it has because of the lack of spare parts.

It can be read as “Toyota rolls out its BYD’s first mass-produced battery electric car in Japan” and your comment could be interpreted to mean “We, ourselves, are so unsure about our BYD’s EVs that we will only lease, but we have no particular product of our own and we are late enough to begin R&D now so we’ll just take the best choice out there from those who’ll accept us”.

EVs have been selling well for the better part of the last decade. Leasing was done at the beginning to get people familiarized with the tech. That is not required now. This is just a company trying to throw shade on a technology that has already proved itself. This leasing thing in my book throws shade on Toyota instead. Even Nissan has been selling EVs for years now. This is not necessary and Toyota knows it.