Toyota's first electric sports car aimed to be indistinguishable from a gasoline one

Despite all the strides made by electric vehicles in the last decade, there's still one category where they're sorely lacking: the affordable EV sports car. We've seen sedans, SUVs, supercars, and even pickup trucks, but there's yet to be an EV that drives like a Miata. That could be changing, as a new report from the U.K. suggests that Toyota is working on an electric performance prototype worthy of the GR badge.

At the recent 24 Hours of Le Mans, Autocar spoke to Akio Toyoda, Toyota's recently retired president and grandson of the company's founder, and says he is still taking an active role in developing the EV sports car. Toyoda, a known enthusiast that has driven some of Toyota's race cars at endurance and rally competitions around the world, says that he wants his performance EVs to be almost indistinguishable from their gasoline counterparts.

"The starting point is not what powertrain the car has, but how fun it is to drive regardless of that powertrain," Toyoda revealed to Autocar. "I actually had the opportunity to test drive a BEV GR we are working on recently. I don’t know if that car will make it onto the market yet, but the first priority of making these kinds of cars is that they need to be fun to drive, no matter what powertrain they use.”