Toyota Baby Lunar Cruiser Concept Revealed: It's Like an FJ40 Land Cruiser For the Moon

The Japanese automaker's design studio has two facilities – Newport Beach, California, for conceptual ideas and Ann Arbor, Michigan, for production designs. And Calty Design Research has major significance in everything Toyota has done over the past five decades for the North American region, from the 1978 Toyota Celica to the 2024 Toyota Tacoma, as well as "countless concepts and production vehicles in between."

Now, they are celebrating half a century of existence by revealing never-seen-before concepts to the public for the first time, as well as looking into the future of potential space exploration. How come they are involved with stuff that NASA, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos are doing? Well, remember the collaboration from some years ago between JAXA (The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Toyota?

That interesting hook-up yielded the Toyota Lunar Cruiser fuel cell rover, and now Calty is giving it a baby brother, or sister, or whatever a wheeled sibling is called these days. Anyway, meet the Toyota Baby Lunar Cruiser Concept, a vehicle that carries the beloved 'baby' moniker that has been circulating around the rumor mill for some time already. However, the automotive industry's reporting outlets were speaking of a baby 2024 Land Cruiser – possibly named Land Hopper – that would dwell on Earth, not the Moon.

So, perhaps they're not the one and the same. Anyway, the BLC (Toyota Baby Lunar Cruiser) was imagined as the perfect vehicle to "conquer rugged terrain on Earth and beyond," as well as carry Toyota's heritage because the concept "embodies a unique mix of adaptive technology and heritage design cues from the original FJ40 Land Cruiser." As such, what we see is an "an interplanetary exploration vehicle" that could easily make ETs rush on Bring a Trailer to bid for an original FJ40 Land Cruiser.

Joking aside, the BLC has been designed with in-wheel electric motors, dual joystick controls, a compact footprint, airless tires, a "protruding glass canopy, and a panoramic, augmented reality dashboard display." Additional highlights include the 'TOYOTA' script on the 'grille,' plus M.O.L.L.E. panels, a split tailgate configuration at the rear, adjustable spaceframe seats, plus a vast array of cameras and lidar/radar sensors to help it understand and navigate its surroundings easier.

Of course, since this is a design prototype, there are no details pertaining to the vehicle's actual performance – such as ride height, engine power, battery capacity, range, and acceleration prowess. However, it does look cool next to its earthly ancestor, right?