Toyota’s electric cars are selling at a pace the company has never seen before, yet its total sales are still moving in the opposite direction. New figures for the first nine months of 2026 show a striking split inside the world’s largest carmaker: battery-powered models are surging, while demand for its petrol and hybrid cars in China is falling fast enough to drag the whole business down. It is a moment of transition for a company that built its reputation on hybrids and came later than many rivals to fully electric driving.
Toyota’s Electric Vehicle Sales More Than Double
Toyota and its luxury brand Lexus sold 309,766 fully electric vehicles around the world between January and September 2026, a rise of 127.4 per cent on the same nine months of last year. Sales have therefore more than doubled in a single year. The growth has been remarkably consistent: apart from January, when electric sales still rose by 87.5 per cent, every month of 2026 has seen sales at least double compared with the same month in 2025. Much of the momentum comes from a wider, fresher range. Toyota has updated its first electric sport utility vehicles, the bZ4X and the Lexus RZ, and added the C-HR+, the bZ4X Touring and the Urban Cruiser, while Lexus has brought out an electric version of its ES saloon.
The growth is not confined to one market. In Europe, Toyota’s battery-electric sales more than doubled in the first half of 2026, while electrified cars of all kinds reached a record share of its sales there. Even so, perspective matters: the company shifted around 7.51 million vehicles in total over the same nine months, so just under 310,000 electric cars remains a small fraction of the whole.
Toyota’s Overall Global Sales Continue to Fall
While electric sales climbed, Toyota’s overall sales slipped for a third month in a row in September, when it sold 860,107 vehicles worldwide, down 2.2 per cent from September 2025. Across the first nine months of 2026, total sales of about 7.51 million vehicles were 3.4 per cent lower than a year earlier. The decline is not spread evenly. Sales have held up better in North America and Europe, where hybrids remain popular and the new electric models are gaining ground. The drag comes overwhelmingly from China, where demand for petrol and hybrid cars has weakened sharply, with Toyota pointing to rising petrol prices and difficult market conditions.
Toyota Sales Drop Nearly 20% in China
China remains Toyota’s second-largest market after the United States, which is why its troubles there matter so much. Sales in China fell 19.7 per cent in September alone, the eighth month in a row of decline, and over the first nine months of 2026 Toyota sold roughly 1.05 million vehicles there, down 18.9 per cent on the same period last year. The reasons go beyond one weak month. Battery-powered cars and plug-in hybrids now account for roughly two-thirds of new passenger car sales in China, while petrol cars are shrinking much faster than the market as a whole. At the same time, Chinese manufacturers such as BYD, Geely and Chery have expanded aggressively, offering electric cars with fast-changing software, competitive prices and features tailored to local buyers.
Toyota already sells several electric models in China through its joint ventures with GAC Toyota and FAW Toyota, including the bZ3, bZ3X, bZ5 and bZ7. But those cars face a crowded field where domestic brands move quickly, launch new models often and benefit from a dense local supply chain for batteries and electronics.
Toyota Plans More Electric Cars to Compete in China
Toyota’s response is to build its electric future in China itself, expanding its line-up there and using more local manufacturing methods to bring costs down. A central part of the plan is a new Lexus electric sport utility vehicle to be built at a wholly owned plant in Shanghai’s Jinshan district, with production expected to begin in autumn 2027. The project marks a break with long-standing Toyota practice: it will be the first time the company has put a next-generation vehicle with its latest production technology into production in China ahead of Japan. The plant is expected to use large aluminium castings that replace many smaller welded parts, cutting costs and speeding up production, with early output reported at around 1,000 vehicles a month, rising to tens of thousands a year from 2028.
For now, Toyota’s figures tell two stories at once. Its electric cars are finally finding buyers in large numbers around the world, and the growth is broad-based rather than a one-model wonder. Yet its overall sales are falling because its traditional strength in China is fading at the very moment Chinese buyers are embracing electric driving. The race now is whether Toyota’s electric expansion, led by new models and a new factory in Shanghai, can grow fast enough to replace the petrol and hybrid sales it is losing.
