This Lexus EV Skips 86 Parts for One — Just Don't Ask What It Costs
Nikkei reports Toyota will build a new Lexus SUV in Shanghai from autumn 2027 using gigacasting. The catch: no price has been announced yet.
The new electric Lexus is interesting less for the car itself and more for where and how it will be built. According to Nikkei, Toyota plans to start production of an SUV at its own plant in Shanghai as early as autumn 2027 — and the opening pace is surprisingly modest: around 1,000 vehicles a month. One caveat matters more than anything else: the word “cheap” doesn’t belong here yet — Toyota hasn’t announced a price.
Toyota officially confirms the China project itself. The wholly owned Lexus facility in Shanghai will develop and build electric vehicles and batteries, with planned capacity of around 100,000 vehicles a year once fully ramped up. That puts 1,000 units a month in perspective — it’s a cautious first step, roughly 12,000 vehicles a year against a plant capable of 100,000.
The key technical shift is gigacasting: instead of stamping body panels piece by piece, large sections are cast as one single piece of aluminum. Toyota offers a telling example: the rear section of the current bZ4X is built from 86 stamped parts and requires 33 production steps. Gigacasting replaces all of that with one part and one operation — fewer components, less weight, lower costs, and less investment in production.
But savings on the factory floor don’t automatically translate into a cheaper car or cheaper body repairs. Toyota hasn’t published pricing for the new Lexus, nor its repair documentation. So the “cheap EV” framing making the rounds is getting ahead of the facts — facts that simply don’t exist yet.
Even the name isn’t confirmed. A link to the Lexus LF-ZL concept seems logical — both are large SUVs — but officially Toyota only talks about a new Lexus BEV, with no name attached. What Lexus has confirmed is that its next-generation EVs will use a three-section body structure built around gigacasting.
For the eventual buyer, the flashy factory numbers aren’t the whole story. Three unknowns matter far more: battery capacity, real-world range, and price. For now, Toyota has confirmed the technology and the plant, and Nikkei has confirmed the expected production timeline. The rest of the details will surface closer to 2027.