Column: Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda tests high-performance full-electric sports car

LE MANS, France — Toyota Motor Corp.’s Gazoo racing arm has developed a full-electric sports car that aims to show EVs can be just as exhilarating to drive as fast gasoline models.

Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda tested a prototype of the car, which looks like a battery-electric model, but offers the driving sensation of an internal combustion engine vehicle.

“You hear the engine noise inside the car and you have a manual transmission with a clutch," Toyoda said on the sidelines of the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race June 10. "You truly do not notice you are driving an electric car — the only thing missing is the smell of gasoline."

Toyoda said a decision on whether the GR electric sports car will be brought to market has not been made.

If it goes into series production, the Gazoo car could be the pinnacle of Toyota’s electrification push, just as the GranTurismo Folgore high-performance coupe is for Maserati and production models derived from the Mission X hypercar are for Porsche.

Toyota so far has lagged in the electrification age, launching its midsize battery-electric bZ4X SUV in 2021, followed last year by the similarly sized Lexus RZ.

Despite being the world's largest automaker, the company produced just 24,000 Toyota and Lexus brand EVs worldwide in 2022, compared with the 1.31 million EVs sold by Tesla.

Toyota plans to sell 3.5 million EVs a year by 2030.