Toyota Motor Corporation plans to offer 10 new battery-powered vehicles and aim for annual sales of 1.5 million EVs by 2026 in an effort to rapidly expand its presence in a field in which it has been much outpaced by competitors.
At a conference on Friday, top executives detailed plans for the future of the world’s largest automaker by sales, including the creation of a new, specialized organization to focus on next-generation battery electric vehicles.
Last year, Toyota sold fewer than 25,000 hybrid or electric vehicles across the globe. This number includes sales of the upscale Lexus brand.
Investors and environmental groups have said that Toyota has lost momentum to Tesla Inc. and others that have more nimbly captured the fast-growing demand for battery-powered cars because of the company’s delayed adoption of the technology.
Japanese automaker Nissan has said that electric vehicles are merely one alternative for consumers, with gasoline-electric hybrids like the groundbreaking Prius being a more practical option for some markets and drivers.
At his first press conference as CEO, Koji Sato said, “In the next few years, we will expand our line-up in the important battery electric category,” while also emphasizing the continued significance of hybrids.
By 2030, it is anticipated that electric vehicles will account for more than half of the world’s total vehicle manufacturing.
With the expansion of EVs surpassing the growth of the total market, Toyota will need to increase manufacturing in the United States to keep up with demand.
Prior to Friday’s announcement, an S&P Global Mobility prediction predicted that Toyota would sell 1.2 million battery-powered vehicles annually in 2026. Toyota’s new goal is to sell 1.5 million BEVs annually by 2026, a 25 percent increase.
According to Yoshiaki Kawano, associate director at S&P Global Mobility, “there’s a gap of 300,000 units, so that can be thought of as a difference of about a year.”
He said, “It doesn’t seem like it’s impossible to achieve at all,” yet the result ultimately hinged on the Toyota models introduced.
Toyota said its first-quarter sales in the United States dropped by about 9 percent. General Motors, on the other hand, witnessed an increase of 18 percent, thanks in large part to the growing interest of fleets and commercial clients in electric vehicles.
According to S&P Global Mobility statistics from the month of November, the majority of U.S. consumers who are making the move to electric vehicles are purchasing models from Toyota and Honda Motor Co.
East Peterson-Trujillo, a clean vehicle advocate with the group Public Citizen, said in an interview before the briefing, “Now that it is time to make the next big innovative leap, Toyota is falling behind, and more and more folks in the U.S. are starting to understand that.”