Toyota and Lexus sold 309,766 battery-electric vehicles worldwide in the first nine months of 2026, a gain of 127.4 percent from the same stretch of 2025. In the same period, the company’s sales in China fell 18.9 percent to just over 1.05 million vehicles. The two numbers describe an automaker whose smallest powertrain category is growing fastest while its most important Chinese business shrinks.
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Electrification is not what is pulling Toyota down. Total electric volume, large as the percentage looks, remains a small slice of a business that moved 7.51 million vehicles across the nine months, and the drag from combustion and hybrid demand in China is bigger than the lift from batteries.
Doubling every month but one
The growth rates come from Electrek’s analysis of Toyota’s monthly reports. Apart from January, when electric sales rose 87.5 percent, every month of 2026 more than doubled the figure for the same month of 2025. Updated versions of the first-generation electric SUVs, the bZ4X (sold in the U.S. as the bZ) and the Lexus RZ, did part of the work, and new arrivals such as the C-HR+, the bZ4X Touring, the Urban Cruiser and the Lexus ES electric added more.
Toyota and Lexus have both promised a three-row electric SUV within the next few months. Electrek, citing CleanTechnica data, placed the bZ4X as the world’s 20th best-selling electric vehicle through August with nearly 100,000 units, which shows how far a doubling from a low base still leaves the brand from the segment leaders.
The base for that comparison was small. Toyota’s group-wide figures for January through September 2025, reported by Zigwheels, counted 136,190 battery-electric vehicles, against 3.3 million hybrids and 143,714 plug-in hybrids. Moving from that figure to 309,766 reproduces the 127.4 percent gain, and it puts batteries at roughly 4 percent of the 7.51 million vehicles in Electrek’s global total. Hybrids remain the product that pays for the transition, which is why a falling Chinese market for hybrids and gasoline cars hurts more than the electric surge helps.
China: eight months of decline and a weak September
Toyota’s own September sales, production and export record covers the company and Daihatsu. According to Electrek’s reading, global sales were 860,107 vehicles in September, down 2.2 percent, the third straight monthly drop, and 7.51 million for the nine months, down 3.4 percent. China fell nearly 20 percent in September alone, the eighth consecutive month of decline. Toyota said overall demand remained steady but that China stayed weak, in part because of rising gasoline prices.
The pattern was visible a month earlier. Reuters reported that August global sales fell 6.4 percent to 790,743 vehicles, with China down 22.8 percent in a seven-month slide that it tied to higher fuel prices weighing on both hybrids and conventional engines. Japan was the one large market that grew that month, rising 9.1 percent.
Fuel prices are the stated cause, and the Toyota statement is specific about it: the market stayed weak due in part to rising gasoline prices. That reasoning cuts against the company’s volume cars in China, where Reuters tied higher petrol prices to weaker demand for both hybrids and conventional engines, the two families that make up most of Toyota’s range. Toyota has answered with the bZ3, bZ3X and bZ5 lineup, yet its China total of just over 1.05 million vehicles for the nine months was still 18.9 percent below the year before.
Through September, Toyota sold more vehicles in Japan, 1.19 million, than in China, a reversal for a company that long treated China as its second pillar after the U.S.
Electric models built in China for Chinese buyers
Part of Toyota’s electric growth is itself a China story. The joint ventures GAC Toyota and FAW Toyota sell the bZ3, bZ3X, bZ5 and bZ7, models developed for the local market. Electrek noted that Nikkei reported in August that Toyota plans to build a new Lexus electric SUV at its Shanghai plant using gigacasting, with production expected next fall. Electrek covered that shift in its report on Toyota building an EV in China first.
Volkswagen is on a similar path and shows what the pressure looks like at a rival. The German group’s nine-month results show vehicle sales down 11 percent, a drop that falls to 1 percent when the Chinese joint ventures are taken out. Electrek reported that Volkswagen’s China deliveries fell 38 percent in the third quarter to 405,800 units, and that the company plans to use China-developed technology for next-generation electric cars sold abroad.
The unresolved question for Toyota is whether the electric products selling in China can close the gap left by hybrids and gasoline models. Its September figures show the answer, so far, is no: global sales have now declined three months running even as battery volume more than doubled. The three-row SUV that Toyota and Lexus promised and the Shanghai-built Lexus are the next tests, and neither has a shipping date in the sources reviewed.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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