The Toyota Hilux Just Went Electric Without Giving Up Its Ladder Frame

The pickup that built its name on diesel and mud now has an electric motor on the resume, plus a face you will not confuse with any Hilux before it.

Half a century in, the Hilux is still the truck people reach for when the road runs out. It is not sold in the United States, but almost every American who follows trucks knows the reputation, the one that survived every abuse a TV show could throw at it. So when Toyota redraws it from scratch and slots a fully electric version into the range, that is worth paying attention to on either side of the ocean.

Toyota pulled the wraps off the all-new, ninth-generation Hilux on November 10, 2025, at a launch event in Bangkok, Thailand. The location fits, since the truck is engineered and largely built in that region for a global audience. A broader market rollout is expected to build through 2026, with a major launch event lined up for late July. The headline from the November reveal: for the first time, there is a battery-electric Hilux sitting alongside the familiar diesel and a new 48-volt mild-hybrid setup.

A front end that argues with the old one

The most obvious change is up front. Gone is the tall hexagonal grille that defined the last few Hilux generations. In its place sits a body-colour panel with a raised geometric, honeycomb-style texture. Toyota leans into that treatment hardest on the electric version, which needs far less cooling airflow than a diesel. Slim LED headlamps stretch across the corners, tied together by a central bar carrying the TOYOTA lettering. Below that, the bumper and skid-plate area is squared off and deliberately rugged, so the truck still reads as a workhorse rather than a soft crossover.

Toyota is keeping the “Tough x Agile” design language it used to describe the new body, and the electric model earns a few dedicated cues of its own: the wheel-arch mouldings are dropped, there is BEV badging on the tailgate, and a charging port lives on the front wing. It rides on dedicated 17-inch aero-tuned alloy wheels with a directional, diamond-cut design meant to manage airflow. Those wheels are new, and they are specific to the electric truck.

Three ways to move it

Here the new Hilux gets interesting, because Toyota is running its multi-path strategy right through a single body-on-frame truck. The diesel carries on, a 48-volt mild-hybrid arrives to smooth it out and trim consumption, and the all-electric version is the real newcomer. Toyota calls the Hilux BEV its first fully electric body-on-frame production vehicle. That claim matters, because ladder-frame trucks are the hardest thing to electrify without wrecking their payload and towing manners.

Powertrains at a glance

Variant	Key hardware	Working figures
Dieselcarryover, updated	2.8-litre turbo-diesel	Up to 3,500 kg braked towing
48V mild hybridnew	2.8-litre diesel + 48V system under rear seats	Up to ~1 tonne payload; 700 mm wading retained
Hilux BEVall-new	Dual eAxle, permanent AWD, 59.2 kWh battery	Front 80 kW / rear 128 kW; ~1,600 kg towing

Range figures need a caveat. Toyota's global reveal quoted a cruising range of “300 km or more” for the BEV, while European WLTP figures come in lower, roughly 240 to 260 km combined depending on the source, with a higher city-cycle number. Those are different test methods measuring different things, so treat them as separate numbers rather than a contradiction. Diesel and mild-hybrid outputs also vary by market, and the exact horsepower per region has not been fully detailed.

The cabin finally caught up

Inside, the jump is bigger than the exterior lets on. Higher grades get a pair of 12.3-inch displays: a configurable digital instrument cluster ahead of the driver and a multimedia touchscreen of up to 12.3 inches beside it. There is a new steering wheel, a redesigned horizontal centre console, a wireless charger and added USB ports for rear passengers. On the electric model the old gear lever gives way to a compact shift-by-wire selector, which frees up the console. This is the first Hilux cabin that feels built around its screens rather than having them added late.

When you'll see it, and where you won't

The timeline comes in stages. Toyota has said BEV production starts from December 2025, with the 48-volt mild-hybrid following in spring 2026, and an Asian market rollout building sequentially through 2026. A larger launch push is expected around late July 2026, which is when market-specific trims and pricing should firm up. A hydrogen fuel-cell Hilux is further out, slated for Europe and Oceania from 2028.

Pricing has not been officially announced, and any regional figure you see before the market launches should be treated as an estimate rather than a confirmed number. Then there is the caveat American readers already know: the Hilux is not sold new in the U.S., so this stays a global-icon story to follow rather than a truck you can order at a local dealer. It still matters here. The Hilux sets the tone for what a tough midsize pickup is supposed to be, and nobody has put battery power in a ladder-frame version of it until now.