Is this Toyota's $32,000 electric SUV? Japanese giant and Suzuki to team up for bZ1X to take the fight to the MG4 and BYD Atto 3: Reports

Toyota could be about to surprise the market with a tiny and very affordable electric SUV in a joint venture with Suzuki.

The reports come from Japanese car news site bestcarweb.jp, which said automotive giant Toyota and Suzuki will reveal a jointly developed little EV, possibly called the bZ1X SUV in 2025.

This wouldn't be the first time Toyota has teamed up with another carmaker to produce an EV. Only last year Toyota and Subaru joined forces to produce a mid-sized electric SUV. Subaru called its version the Solterra and Toyota named it the bZ4X.

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Dubbed the younger brother of the bZ4X, the bZ1X as it’s already been named by the public, is expected to be tiny at about 3.7m long. Toyota’s smallest car currently sold in Australia is the Yaris at 4.2m end to end. Suzuki’s smallest is the Ignis, which is exactly 3.7m in length.

Of course there’s no pricing information yet and Toyota Australia has yet to reply after we reached out to see if the bZ1X will arrive in Australia next year, if at all, but bestcarweb.jp forecasts the little electric SUV will come in at about A$32,000.

If the bZ1X is sold for that price in Australia it would become the most affordable EV in the country and undercut the likes of the BYD Atto 3 and MG4.

Toyota's bZ1X (Image: Best Car Web)

To make the news even more intriguing, the world may have also been shown the upcoming bZ1X years ago.

In 2021 Toyota made a big announcement promising to bring at least 16 fully electric vehicles to market by 2030. A tiny red SUV positioned behind Toyota’s Global boss Akio Toyoda might have been the bZ1X all along - it’s certainly the right size.

Now almost five years later Toyota currently only has one fully electric vehicle on sale in Australia - the bZ4X. Whether the little red car is its baby brother and if it comes to Australia is yet to be seen.