This concept looks to the future as Lexus builds BEV for 2020

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  The Lexus LF-30 is the brand’s concept of a battery EV a decade from now. [credit: Lexus ]

This year’s Tokyo auto show just got underway in Japan, and in keeping with the zeitgeist, there are plenty of new electric vehicles at the show. However, like the annual Frankfurt auto show, seeing some of the debuts can be frustrating from a US perspective. For example, Mazda has a cool new battery EV—with suicide doors—but like the cute Honda E there are no plans to bring it to America. But one Japanese brand that will bring us a BEV is Lexus. It plans to bring the as-yet-unseen electric car to the US and China in 2020, although everyone has to wait until November to actually see what it looks like.

In the meantime, the company has the LF-30 concept to keep us guessing. Before anyone gets ahead of themselves, this is absolutely not what a production Lexus EV will look like next year. The clue is in the name—”30″ refers to the year 2030, so this really is one of those corporate flights of fancy that still requires an enabling technology or two to be perfected first.

The LF-30 uses individual hub motors mounted in each wheel, which, it says, allow the design to “visually express the energy created by the wheels set at the corners of the vehicle body streaming toward the vehicle cabin and past the driver to directly flow onto the road surface.” With no traditional hood upon which to mount its Cylon-shaped grille (officially known as the “spindle”), the spindle shape shows up all over the place—an angle here in the window line, a crease there in an air intake.