Toyota Sold More Than 1.52 Million Electrified Vehicles in 2017

Toyota Motor Corporation have recently announced that they reached a major milestone in the annual sales for electrified powertrains in 2017 with over 1.52 million vehicles sold worldwide. That number is an 8% increase over the prior record set in 2016 and accomplishes one of Toyota’s Environmental Challenge 2050 targets of selling more than 1.5 million electrified vehicles in a single year, three years in advance of the original target set for 2020. Cumulative sales of electrified vehicles now exceed 11.47 million which allows for a reduction of more than 90 million tons of CO2 compared to sales of equivalent, non-electrified vehicles. Since introducing its original commercially available electrified powertrain on the Prius back in 1997, Toyota has tirelessly worked to improve the technology and has achieved many significant milestones since such as the first mass-produced Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (Mirai) in 2014, fourth generation of the Prius in 2016, and the second-gen Prius Plug-In Electric Vehicle in 2017. Toyota will continue to further the development of electrified vehicles as it now hopes to include the mass production of battery electric vehicles from 2020 first starting in China and India, followed by Japan, North America and Europe. Additionally, the hope is that they will also be able to expand sales of hybrid vehicles to emerging markets to further contribute to lowering CO2 worldwide. These efforts to improve every aspect of electrified vehicles led Toyota directly to their ‘Environmental Challenge 2050’ where they hope to achieve annual electrified vehicle sales of 5.5 million units by 2030. In order to achieve this goal, Toyota have said they plan to have 10 BEV models available worldwide by the early 2020s and by about 2025, they plan to have an electrified version of all its available models across its global lineup.