Toyota sold 11.23 million vehicles in 2023 and, for the fourth year running, finished as the biggest car company in the world. Volkswagen Group came second with 9.24 million, which is not close. The numbers came out at the end of January 2024, alongside a rather less comfortable set of announcements about test cheating at its subsidiaries.
Where the sales came from
The 11.23 million covers the whole group, up 7.2% on 2022, according to CBT News. The Toyota and Lexus brands alone sold 10,307,395 vehicles, 824,258 of them Lexus, the strongest year on record for the two. Daihatsu added 790,441 and Hino 135,203. Sales outside Japan reached an all-time high of 8.93 million.
Regionally, the picture was uneven. North America rose 7%, Europe 9.1%, and Japan jumped 29.8% to 1.67 million units. China went the other way, down 1.7%, which Carscoops put down to tougher competition. Production climbed too: 11.51 million vehicles across all Toyota brands, against 10.61 million the year before, with 4.3 million built in Japan and 7.2 million elsewhere.
Hybrids, not batteries
Notably, Toyota got there without leaning on battery-electric cars. It sold just 104,018 of them. Its hybrids did the heavy lifting: 3.42 million full hybrids, 124,755 plug-in hybrids and 26,859 mild hybrids. Hybrid and fully electrified vehicles made up 36% of Toyota and Lexus sales, and the company credited strong demand in Europe and North America and the popularity of hybrids for the growth.
The shadow over the record
The celebration was muted. In April 2023 Daihatsu admitted rigging side-impact results for thousands of vehicles, using swapped airbag control units in the tests, and later investigations found the same at several Toyota companies. By December it was confirmed that Daihatsu’s collision-test tampering went back to 1989. Days before the sales figures, Toyota Industries was found to have doctored test data to win certification, and Toyota suspended shipments of 10 models.
Chairman Akio Toyoda apologised publicly. “I would like to express my deepest apologies to our customers and stakeholders for the inconvenience and concern caused by the successive irregularities at Hino Motors, Daihatsu and Toyota Industries,” he said, as reported by Reuters. He said he would push the group to return to basics. Toyota entered 2024 with momentum from a rapid post-pandemic recovery in manufacturing, CBT News noted, though it will have to keep up the pace to stay ahead.
Sources
- Toyota Keeps Global Sales Crown With 11.23 Million Vehicles, Leaves VW In A Distant Second | Carscoops
- Toyota defends best-seller title as safety controversies mount | CBT News
