Toyota outsells expectations: it sells 1.5 million electrified vehicles three years ahead of schedule

Global sales of Toyota electrified vehicles exceeded 1,520,000 units in 2017, an increase of 8 percent over the previous record (2016) set by the Japanese manufacturer.

In addition, Toyota has also achieved, three years ahead of schedule, one of the ambitious goals the Japanese brand had set for itself in its Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050, namely surpassing 1.5 million units of electrified vehicles sold in a single year by 2020.

The Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050 foresees that the Japanese manufacturer’s electrified vehicle sales will exceed 5.5 million units a year by 2030. To achieve this goal, Toyota plans to launch up to 10 new battery electric vehicles (BEV) between 2020 and 2025. By that latter date, Toyota aims to have a full electric variant in each of its different model ranges on a global scale.

Starting in 2020, Toyota will introduce its new battery vehicles in different markets. Distribution will begin first in the Chinese and Indian markets and then continue in its domestic market. Subsequently, demand in the United States and Europe will be covered.

“In just over 20 years we have seen sales of new electrified vehicles grow from fewer than 500 units in a single country to more than 1.5 million units across more than 90 countries and regions,” says Shigeki Terashi, Executive Vice President of Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC).

Since the launch of the Prius, its first electrified vehicle, in Japan in 1977, Toyota has focused much of its strategy on the electrification of its different ranges. In addition to the successive introduction of hybrid versions across nearly all of them, Toyota launched the Mirai in 2014, the first mass-produced model equipped with fuel cell technology, the fourth generation of the Prius — the one currently on sale — in 2016, and the second generation of the Prius Plug-in Hybrid in 2017.

The Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050 also aims to reach annual worldwide sales of around 30,000 fuel cell vehicles by 2020, of which roughly 1,000 units a month (more than 10,000 a year) will be sold in Japan alone.

It also plans to sell more than 100 fuel cell buses before the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. By that same date, in addition to the already achieved goal of selling more than 1.5 million electrified units, it expects to exceed 15 million hybrid vehicles cumulatively since the launch of the first Prius. With all this, Toyota plans to reduce the average emissions of its new vehicles by more than 22 percent by 2020, compared with the brand’s global average in 2010.