Sato has mentioned his EV overhaul will lead off with Lexus, which already has mentioned it plans to go absolutely electrical worldwide by 2035 and promote 1 million EVs globally in 2030.
Toyota, as a complete, is focusing on world gross sales of three.5 million EVs in that time-frame.
Getting there would require a speedy climb. In 2022, Toyota bought solely 24,466 full-electric automobiles worldwide. That compares with 2.6 million hybrids in the identical interval.
Taking part in catchup
However Toyota is stepping up the tempo in 2023 with a ramped up rollout of the Toyota bZ4X crossover and its Lexus premium counterpart, the RZ.
Toyota’s world EV gross sales greater than tripled to 9,016 automobiles within the first two months of the yr.
Within the crucial U.S. market, in the meantime, Toyota bought about 1,880 EVs via March. Against this, Basic Motors, its prime mainstream American rival, bought greater than 20,000.
However whilst Toyota strikes sooner into EVs, the competitors isn’t standing nonetheless.
If Toyota reaches 1.5 million EV gross sales in 2026, Chinese language EV rival BYD could possibly be promoting 3 million and Tesla as a lot as 5 million, mentioned Koji Endo, senior auto analyst at SBI Securities Co. in Tokyo.
“Toyota’s 2026 purpose is an enormous, huge leap, so far as Toyota is anxious,” Endo mentioned. “However that you must examine it with different makers. There could possibly be half a dozen firms promoting greater than 1.5 million EVs in 2026. Can they actually catch as much as these front-runners? That’s the query.”