Toyota lowers its sales targets for BEVs
- The Toyota group, which invested in battery electric vehicles much later than most other carmakers, particularly versus Chinese and European, is lowering its sales targets for fully electric vehicles. Until now, the world's leading carmaker expected one and a half million of its electric cars sold worldwide in 2026, but it has just announced that it is lowering its forecast to one million units due to the slowdown in the global electric vehicle market in 2024, despite a robust dynamic in China (BEVs represent 24% of the Chinese passenger car market). This new forecasts is equivalent to a 33% drop in Toyota's objectives, which had nevertheless unveiled a series of BEV concepts which were to be mass produced between 2025 and 2030. Today, sales of battery electric vehicles represent only 1.5% of Toyota's total sales, compared to 15% for BMW for example.
- Toyota remains a specialist and world leader of full-hybrid technology, with 2.2 million units sold over the first seven months of 2024 (i.e. 38% of Toyota's total sales).
- Despite the announcement of the reduction of its objectives for battery electric vehicles, Toyota intends to develop fuel cell technology (FCV) with the German group BMW which works for several years now on hydrogen cars. BMW has also scheduled the launch of an hydrogen car for 2028.
- Toyota and BMW will therefore work together on the future generation of fuel cell modules. There are currently 100,000 hydrogen vehicles on the road worldwide, including several thousand Toyota Mirai.