Meet Toyota's Big New Electric Van. It's Not What You Think

This is the Toyota Proace Max. It’s an all-electric commercial vehicle that just went on sale in Europe as the Japanese company’s first heavy-duty van in the region. Available with a 110-kilowatt-hour battery and a single, front-mounted electric motor that’s good for 200 kilowatts of power, the Proace Max has a WLTP-rated range of 260 miles.

If all of this sounds familiar, you’re not wrong.

That’s because this new electric commercial vehicle is actually a Fiat Ducato underneath that Toyota badge. Or a Ram ProMaster, for that matter. They’re all identical except for the logos and maybe some plastic bits here and there. Sorry, Toyota fans who were hoping for a Japanese-made EV.

The Proace Max joins the similarly badge-engineered Proace in Europe, which is based on the Citroen Jumpy, another Stellantis product. Here, the story gets a bit more interesting and confusing because the auto giant could actually bring this smaller commercial electric vehicle to the United States under the ProMaster City moniker–not to be confused with the even smaller Toyota Proace City, which is a Citroen Berlingo underneath. If small vans are your thing, you can find out more in this dedicated article.

Getting back to the Toyota Proace Max, its battery can be fast-charged at 150 kW, enabling a top-up to 80% state of charge in 55 minutes, according to its maker. On the AC front, the van comes as standard with an 11 kW on-board charger.

With a starting price of £60,180 (roughly $77,000 at current exchange rates) in the United Kingdom, the electric Proace Max is available either as a chassis cab or a panel van. There’s also a diesel version on offer which is cheaper and can be specced as a dropside, tipper and platform cab in addition to the panel van and chassis cab body styles.

Inside, there’s a 10-inch touchscreen for the infotainment system, a digital instrument cluster, automatic air conditioning, automatic headlights with automatic high beam, a reversing camera and rear parking sensors. That’s precisely what the Fiat Ducato and Ram ProMaster EVs come with from the factory.