What’s Toyota’s strategy for vehicle electrification?

Long before Teslas or even Nissan Leafs appeared on Australian roads, the first time most Australians ever experienced electrified driving, it was in a Toyota hybrid.

Yet the big red and white brand – which was already ubiquitous in Australia years before its first hybrid Priuses appeared in 2001 – hasn’t been the leader of the pack when it comes to full battery electric vehicles (BEV).

That accolade was initially taken by the Nissan Leaf, with Tesla then enjoying strong success which in turn has most recently been challenged by Chinese car makers such as BYD and MG.

Throughout this time, Toyota has continued to expand its range of hybrid vehicle offerings and finally introduced its first fully electric vehicle in March 2024, the bZ4X.

The second generation of its hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle, the Mirai, was also launched in April 2021, though the Mirai was pricey and its availability was limited.

Toyota continues to face bullish challenges from Chinese brands. It’s faced other challenges, too.

In 2020, the ACCC said it had received a number of complaints about Toyota’s approach to consumers experiencing issues with the diesel particulate filter (DPF) in their vehicles.

It led to a court-enforceable undertaking from Toyota Motor Corporation Australia to take a number of steps to review and improve its compliance processes in relation to the Australian Consumer Law consumer guarantees.

More recently, Toyota has also faced criticism about its limited battery electric vehicle (BEV) offerings.

Yet amongst all of this, Toyota’s share of the Australian new car market has increased.

Big in WA

Western Australians like their Toyotas more than the rest of the country.

Nationally in 2024, Toyota had a 19.8 percent share of the market. In WA though, it had a 22.7 per cent share.

In Queensland, that other big mining state that likes its four-wheel drives, Toyota had only a 20.3 percent share of the market.

Toyota’s presence in WA has increased even further in the first half of 2025.

Over January-June 2025, Toyota in WA had a 23.8 percent market share (19.9 percent nationally), meaning nearly one in every four new vehicles sold in WA was a Toyota.

In second place was Ford, with a WA market share of 7.8 percent, followed by Hyundai (6.5 percent), then Mitsubishi (6.3 per cent) and Mazda (6 per cent).

So why such dominance? Toyota was late to the battery EV market and still only has one on sale, prices are rising (especially the Prado), and the Hilux is now 10 years old.

Let’s back up a little.

Hybrids - why are we doing this?

In an exclusive interview with Horizons, Toyota’s vice president of sales and marketing in Australia, Sean Hanley, said the brand’s position in the Australian market today is down to decisions taken decades ago to develop hybrid tech back before it was cheap, common or cool.

“Back in October 2001, Toyota launched its very first hybrid vehicle in this market,” Hanley says. “We launched the Prius, and at the time, we could only sell maybe six a month. The car was $39,990.”

“ICE engines were alive and well, Toyota was on a northern trajectory in sales and market share was high. [So] I couldn’t quite understand at the time the significance of the [Prius’s] launch. I said, ‘I don’t understand why we are doing this.’”

“I recall speaking to the then-senior executive of TMCA (Toyota Motor Corporation Australia).

“He said, ‘You need to understand something about this industry and its future. People will always want a form of mobility – that’s never going to go away. It will change, but it won’t go away’.”

“But he said that unfortunately, our industry has two major problems it needs to address quickly.”

“One, we produce vehicles that pollute the world. Secondly – and sadly and tragically – the things we produce have the capacity to injure, if not kill people.”

Hanley said the executive told him that emissions and safety were the two things the industry needed to address to survive in the motor industry in the next 30 years: reduce the environmental impact of vehicles and put better safety in them.

Now, 24 years after that conversation took place, vehicle safety across all brands has vastly improved.

Hybrid domination

Just as notably, Toyota have taken what was in 2001 an overpriced oddity with a weird hybrid engine and honed that technology to the point where it is now normalised, affordable and practical.

“It took 24 years for Toyota to mature hybrid [technology] to a point where we had scale and could bring the price down from a very expensive introduction in 2001,” Hanley says.

In 2025, hybrid vehicles are expected to comprise more than half of Toyota’s expected 220,000 vehicle sales.

Toyota was indeed a pioneer of hybrid technology, but it took a conservative, patient and methodical approach to its development.

The benefits of this careful, evolutionary approach to vehicle development are levels of reliability, practicality and servicing affordability that not all competitors can match.

These traits are especially important in WA, where the distances are big and the environment is often very harsh.

In regional and remote areas, fuss-free reliability, vehicle range, and the ability to repair a vehicle are critical. And although the truth is that most of us live in the metro area, it doesn’t mean we value those things much less.

This goes a long way to explaining Toyota’s dominant market share here: its ongoing focus on vehicle types with high consumer demand (like utes and SUVs) that are durable, affordable to run and are exactly fit-for-purpose.

This is why Toyota has eggs spread across many baskets other than EVs, including popular off-roaders like the Hilux, Prado and Landcruiser 300 Series, and high-volume hybrids like the RAV4, Camry and Corolla.

Other brands have a broader spread of EV models. Hyundai and Kia already have five EVs each on sale, BYD has four, MG has three and of course there is still Tesla and emerging Chinese EV brands such as Leapmotor, XPeng and Zeekr.

But these brands are low on serious off-roaders that would compete directly with Hilux, Prado and 300 Series, or large sedans like the Camry and affordable sports cars like the GR 86.

The NVES impact

For many years it has been a mix of consumer priorities and regulation that has guided the decisions made by manufacturers on the types of vehicles they offer for sale in particular markets.

Now though, the regulatory environment is also set to have a larger impact on the types of vehicles being offered for sale in Australia and their cost. Specifically, the Australian Government’s New Vehicle Emissions Standard (NVES) is designed to financially incentivise car manufacturers to produce and sell more fuel-efficient vehicles.

The rapid growth of EV sales in the early 2020s in Australia certainly demonstrated a portion of us wanted them. However, that growth has softened over the past year. NVES may change this, but Hanley’s expectations are that full electrification of the national fleet will take some time.

“Years ago, it was trendy [for manufacturers] to say, ‘We’re going to have no ICE engines by the end of 2026 and we’re going to be full EV,’” Hanley says.

But he says it was clearly unlikely to happen that fast, particularly in Australia given the limited options available to replace vehicles used in agriculture, heavy off-roading and recreation with suitable electrified alternatives.

Hanley refers to the engineering challenges associated with electrifying vehicle market segments which have predominantly been powered by diesel, such as light and heavy commercial vehicles, which make up around 25 per cent of the new vehicle market.

There are signs of this changing, such as GWM Cannon Alpha and the BYD Shark 6 utes, which perform well and are excellent for saving fuel, but do still have their limitations in some applications.

“Every market in the world is different and every market has unique, fit-for-purpose-required vehicles,” Hanley says. “We realised we had to have a multi-pathway solution.”

That means BEVs will indeed be part of Toyota’s future in Australia, but they won’t be the only drivetrain type. According to Hanley, by the end of 2030, 90 per cent of Toyota vehicles (excluding GR models) will have some sort of electrification.

“That is, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, fuel cell and BEV, and if you want to go a step beyond 2030, probably biofuel technology,” Hanley says. “That’s our solution to reducing our environmental footprint, and of course our safety grows as we launch cars.”

Electrified future

Toyota has continued with the expansion of its hybrid technology in various forms, such as the 48-volt electric assist system in the Hilux introduced in March 2024, with the system included in the new Prado when launched in late 2024.

A hybrid version of the Landcruiser 300 Series has been confirmed by Toyota to be arriving in Australia in the first half of 2026.

More imminently, the upcoming plug-hybrid RAV4 that could well wrest some buyers from Mitsubishi’s Outlander PHEV.

Toyota hasn’t been without its controversies in recent years, some of which still linger.

However, offsetting those issues are the hard-earned positive traits that continue to stoke Western Australians’ demand for the brand’s products.

Among those unique incentives are brand familiarity, a reputation for reliability and parts availability. All of these, in turn, contribute to the stand-out retained values that most Toyota models have.

In RAC’s 2024 Car Running Costs survey, the top five vehicles with the highest percentage of retained value were all Toyotas.

The brand will continue to march to its own drum into the future. However, external changes such as pressure from new challengers in the market, shots across the bow from critics and changing regulations all mean the big T will need to continue adjusting its product mix.

In October 2024, Toyota went into a joint venture with BHP to develop a fully electric Hilux, and in 2026 we’ll see the aforementioned RAV4 plug-in hybrid, while more Toyota EVs are due in 2027.

In June 2024, Toyota also stopped making petrol-only versions of those vehicles that were already available as hybrids, going hybrid-only for those model ranges. It means Corolla, RAV4, Kluger and others are now only available as hybrids.

Mazda’s market adjustment

Toyota isn’t the only brand with a strong focus on hybrid vehicles.

Mazda has a range of hybrid SUVs available and a new all-electric Mazda SUV is expected to arrive on the Australian market in 2026.

Mazda Australia’s managing director, Vinesh Bhindi, told Horizons exclusively that hybrid technology, including plug-in hybrids and mild hybrids, were important technologies for many parts of the world as we pursue reductions in CO2.

This viewpoint has been reflected in Mazda’s actions in recent months, when the manufacturer addressed criticism of its CX-60 mid-sized SUV.

Harsh ride quality and a surging transmission in early CX-60 models – which are available in PHEV and mild hybrid forms – saw reviews call out these issues.

Mazda’s desire to have a competitive hybrid mid-sized SUV saw the manufacturer make substantial changes to the CX-60s suspension and transmission, with the revised CX-60 hitting the market in May 2025. It’s a noticeably better vehicle, too.

Clearly, some manufacturers see strong opportunities with hybrids and are willing to invest in adjusting vehicles to suit specific markets’ needs right now.

“Yes, we will have our battery EVs, yes we will have our [other] hybrid vehicles coming, but this right here right now is a transition to that step,” Bhindi told Horizons.

Bhindi highlighted the importance of vehicles having broad appeal, and that level of appeal was changed in two distinct ways with the revised CX-60.

Firstly, there were the technical changes such as improved ride and transmission refinement. Secondly, Mazda introduced a cheaper entry level variant called the Pure, which was a marketing initiative reflecting where Australian consumers are at in terms of affordability.

Bhindi says the latter was to address the last two years of higher interest rates and cost of living issues.

“So it was done as one, but there were really two different objectives that align in appealing to more customers,” Bhindi says.

With pure EVs making up less than 10 per cent of annual Australian sales in recent years, Toyota, Mazda and other manufacturers like Subaru, Volkswagen, Honda, and General Motors have kept their options open in various ways as the transition to full electrification takes a little longer than first expected – at least for now.