The world’s biggest car maker has just posted a net profit of 4.9 trillion yen – and electric cars have very little to do with the momentum.
The figures for the year ending March 31 indicate that Toyota doubled its income on the previous year, with global sales topping 10.3m units.
That innings puts Toyota at an all-time high, a position rooted in home-market demand as well as busy showrooms in North America and Europe.
And while Europe forges ahead with EV transition goals, Toyota’s sales of hybrid vehicles jumped 31 percent to 3.7m units.
Buoyed by results that exceeded its own expectations, Toyota has issued a forecast for the current year which indicates that it expects profits to fall by nearly 28% as it diverts resources into increased investment. In all, the brand reckons on 10.95m global sales this year, a fall of 1.3% on 2023.
Koji Sato, Toyota CEO, said: “We’ll make investments in order to firmly protect the supply chain from a perspective of sustainable growth,” adding that these latest results “show that our efforts have borne fruit, but we need to keep growing with the vision to become a mobility company.”
These are big numbers, but what is perhaps most surprising in Toyota’s latest insight offering is how few pure EVs the carmaker sold in the last year. While Tesla’s last annual sales were pipped to the post as world number one last year, with Chinese badge BYD taking the lead with a production tally of three million battery-powered cars, Toyota produced just 116,500 pure EVs in 2023.
Against BYD’s 1.6m, that’s a postage stamp effort, and if there is any uncertainty over why Toyota is reticent, given that it broke the mould on hybrid battery-electric progress with the launch of the Prius in 1997, look no further than Akio Toyoda.
The man who was at the helm of the company for 13 years (and is now chairman) notably stated in a recent press Q&A that he did not believe EVs are the answer for future mobility and that, at best, EV adoption will peak at 30% of the market. At the time, he identified the need for a “multi-pathway approach”, stressing that CO2 is the enemy, rather than combustion.
Toyota has faced industry-wide criticism for any favouring of hybrid, hydrogen and petrol over pure EV solutions, yet amid news headlines of EV sales stuttering due to supply chain issues, obstacles to battery resources and political agnosticism, the brand’s shyness towards EV development does not seem out of step with the realities of UK consumer preferences.
As reported in Punchline-Gloucester.com yesterday, the latest sales trands from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders indicate that EV sales demand among private buyers is fragile, with forward growth being largely driven by fleet demand.
As one industry insider said: “Toyota’s positive news today appears to ride on a pragmatic reading of where we are now in terms of what we are buying. Rishi Sunak signalled to buyers last year that they could put off any big decision on going electric, and Toyota’s offerings in hybrid make a strong retail offer as a stepping stone. A hybrid-first strategy really has paid off.”
In total, Toyota, whose annual report includes a declared goal “to contribute to creating a mobility society filled with smiling faces” offers eight hybrid cars in the UK. Its new bZ4X, priced from £42,510, is the maker’s sole EV option.
