- Toyota knows the end is coming for gas-powered cars
- Electric models, especially hybrids, made up 48% of Toyota's US sales in September.
- Toyota has a three-row electric SUV on the way by 2026
Toyota believes it is close to the point where sales of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles will surpass internal combustion vehicles in the US—and they think they will end sales of non-hybrid combustion models altogether. .
“In the US, there's a decision being made now—and I'm not part of it—to stop doing clean ICE [the] The American market,” Gill Pratt, Toyota's chief scientist, in an interview with Bloomberg. “The fact that we're thinking about that means, OK, we must be close.”
2025 Toyota Land Cruiser
Toyota's electrified models—including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell vehicles, as well as EVs—are listed 48% of the US automaker's sales in September, Bloomberg noted, compared to 20% at the same time two years ago.
Most of the lifting is done with hybrids. Almost all of Toyota's US models currently offer a hybrid powertrain, and some—including the Camry midsize sedan, the Sequoia full-size SUV, the Sienna minivan, and the popular Land Cruiser—are available. available only as hybrids.
2024 Toyota bZ4X
Toyota is also moving forward offer plug-in hybrid versions for the Prius and RAV4, though Prime badged on those models for easy customer recognition. It also sells the hydrogen fuel-cell Mirai sedan in California, but infrastructure problems have made owning a hydrogen car somewhat impossible even in that state, which remains the only one close to a proper network of gas stations.
Toyota's only electric models sold in the US are the bZ4X and the related Lexus RZ, but that's about to change. Toyota plans to start building a a three-row electric SUV at the Kentucky plant in 2026, with batteries supplied by the new North Carolina plant. On a global level, the automaker recently announced a tenfold increase in EV production by 2026, and confirmed that it is moving forward with low-volume production of potentially game-changing solid-state batteries.