Toyota Rhombus – a brave new world

Unlike the Nissan Proto, the Toyota Rhombus concept is squarely aimed at changing the current style of vehicle. The exterior looks like something from the whacky races.

Toyota Rhombus

There are huge pods as the front that protrude out like the cheeks of trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie. The windscreen starts at the front of the vehicle and bulgers back to an A pillar in line with the steering wheel, which is in the centre of the car making only one front seat, obviously for the driver.

The main body is an elongated oval so there is only one seat at the very back but two small seats facing inward in the middle creating a lounge room pit style area.

The RHOMBUS is a battery electric vehicle concept car developed by TMEC, Toyota’s base for R&D in China.

The word Rhombus suggests a derivation not from an oval but from a square that is leaning over. In geometric terms a rhombus has equal length sides and opposite sides are parallel.  For this reason, it is sometimes called a diamond.

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Toyota said it plans to roll out more than 10 battery electric vehicle models globally in the next five or six years, with a sales target of more than 5.5 million electrified vehicles worldwide by 2030.

When the vehicle was first muted it was suggested that it could be a taxicab in Europe by 2021 but that was before COVID struck

In a move that highlights how old some motoring enthusiasts are getting and how the future is in the younger generations Toyota has said that the RHOMBUS aims to suit the values and lifestyles of drivers born after 1990.

Some years ago, Toyota had a top-down directive that they would no longer build boring cars.  In saying this they accepted that this would mean that some people would like the deigns and some would definitely not like them. Based on the response at the Chicago Motor Show and on social media, the Rhmobus has achieved this result.

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About David Brown 607 Articles
David’s boyhood passion for motor cars did not immediately lead to a professional role in the motor industry. A qualified Civil Engineer he specialised in traffic engineering and transport planning. What followed were various positions including being seconded to a government think-tank for the planning of transport firstly in Sydney and then for the whole of NSW. After working with the NRMA and as a consultant he moved to being an independent writer and commentator on the broader areas of transport and the more specific areas of the cars we drive. His half hour motoring program “Overdrive” has been described as an “informed, humorous and irreverent look at motoring and transport from Australia and overseas”. It is heard on 22 stations across Australia. He does weekly interviews with several ABC radio stations and is also heard on commercial radio in Sydney. David has written for metropolitan and regional newspapers and has presented regular segments on metropolitan and regional television stations. David is also a contributor for AnyAuto