New Toyota C-HR+ isn’t really a C-HR – but it is ELECTRIC

The Toyota C-HR+ is revealed as a new EV eschewing Toyota’s bZ EV branding for a familiar name and set to cost from under £40k.

The Toyota bZ4X arrived on sale in the UK more than three years ago as the first of a promised new wave of EVs from Toyota as it resigned itself to a future including pure EVs as well as Hybrids.

But despite Toyota’s strong reputation with electrified cars the bZ4X hasn’t exactly been a hit, and nor has its odd name, which sounds more like a 1980’s games console than a Toyota EV.

Toyota’s next EV was much more recent with the arrival of the Toyota Urban Cruiser which looks to be a decently competitive offering around the size of a Yaris Cross and, importantly, with a name instead of a bunch of numbers and letters.

Now we get the new Toyota C-HR+ (initially planned to be the bZ3), which uses a very familiar and successful name despite having nothing, beyond similar looks, in common with its existing hybrid sibling, and is the production take on the Toyota bZ Compact SUV we saw in 2022.

Pedictably, as an EV, there’s more room inside the C-HR+ – with an extra 150mm in the wheelbase – and a slightly bigger boot too, and at 4520mm long it’s s around the size of a Kia Sportage and sits between the Urban Cruiser and bZ4X in Toyota’s EV range.

Two battery options are available, with a 58kWh battery powering a 165bhp FWD model and a 77kWh battery powering a 221bhp FWD model and an AWD model with 338bhp, and promising range of up to 370 miles.

Toyota says it will reveal more details on the C-HR+ nearer to launch later this year, when you can expect it to cost from just under £40k.