About 260 American Toyota owners have been unable to drive their cars since late June. Now, they face a choice – accept a continued loaner car and $5,000 as an apology, or sell their car back to the company that built it and be on their way.
Toyota’s First Mainstream EV
The car in question is Toyota’s first mainstream electric vehicle (EV). The 2023 Toyota bZ4X is a compact crossover with a mouthful for a name and a driving range of up to 252 miles. It offers a distinctive look with heavy black body cladding around the front wheels and surprising living space for a small vehicle.
It’s the first of a full lineup of EVs Toyota plans to bring to market, but it’s had an inauspicious debut. Toyota had sold about 2,700 of the cars worldwide (just 260 stateside) when the company was forced to recall the bZ4X because… there’s really no way to soften this… the wheels could fall off while driving. Toyota picked the cars up from owners and provided them with loaner cars while they work to fix the defect.
For a company with Toyota’s outstanding quality reputation, it’s a shocking quality problem.
Even stranger, Toyota is struggling to solve it.
Owners Can Choose: Indefinite Loaner and Cash, or Sell it Back
The company has now sent a letter to some owners, confirmed by a Toyota spokesperson, offering them a choice:
- Accept an indefinite loaner car, free fuel for that car, and “a credit of $5,000 toward payments of your car loan/lease or purchase price.”
- Alternatively, “Toyota will offer to repurchase your vehicle.”
A spokesman says the terms of the repurchase offer will vary depending on the owner’s “state and particular circumstances.”
Some readers will no doubt recall that Subaru plans its own version of the car. The two companies developed their first mainstream EVs together. The bZ4X shares almost all of its parts with the 2023 Subaru Solterra.
Subaru, however, hasn’t yet delivered a Solterra to a customer in the U.S. Subaru dealers were instructed not to sell the first few Solterras in their inventory while the company works on a fix to the wheel problem.
A Subaru spokesperson confirmed to KBB this morning that all Solterras “have been contained by Subaru and our retailers.”
