Why EVs were just 0.92 per cent of overall Toyota sales in 2023

Toyota scaled new highs in 2023 with over 11.2 million vehicles sold by the company and its subsidiaries through the course of the year gone by. This helped Toyota seal its place as the world's best-selling automotive brand for the fourth successive year. But while these are seriously impressive figures, electric vehicles or EVs had only a microscopically small share.

Toyota sold 11,233,039 cars across the world in 2023. Of this, just 104,018 were battery electric vehicles or BEVs. And while deliveries of BEVs may have seen a 325 per cent rise for the company, the extremely low baseline for comparison means that this increase gets rationalised.

The Japanese company has often been flagged for being slow to the EV game although it was one of the first to come out with hybrid models. The world, however, has come a fair distance from times when the Toyota Prius was a model of envy and the company's EV dreams are largely balanced on the fortunes of models under the Beyond Zero or bZ series.

Toyota is doggedly determined to not let its rivals run away with a yawning lead in the EV domain and wants to have a diversified EV lineup. But even its own top official admits that a solid BEV lineup is only going to have a limited share in the overall sales for Toyota. “No matter how much BEVs progress, I think they will have a market share of 30%. That leaves the remaining 70% as HEVs, FCEVs, or hydrogen engines. I have no doubt that engine vehicles will survive," Akida Toyoda, Chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation, had told Toyota Times during an interaction.

The Race is On

Toyota may maintain its faith in models powered by internal combustion engines but the rate of EV adoption is increasing with passing time. Tesla Model Y was the best-selling vehicle in 2023, as per data collected by JATO Dynamics. As many as 1.23 million units of the EV were reportedly sold in 2023, noticeably more than 1.07 million units of Toyota RAV4 and Toyota Corolla (1.01 million).

Another potential point of concern may be that the Volkswagen Group, Toyota's main rival, took second spot in the overall sales list for 2023 but managed to deliver more EVs in the year than Toyota did - 770,000.