Toyota: Three million vehicles sold, a thousand FCEVs

Japanese OEM Toyota’s enthusiasm for hydrogen and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) remains puzzling. Its January-April sales figures lay bare the mountain the technology would have climb to even approach materiality.

The firm’s Toyota and Lexus brands sold just over 3.2mn vehicles in the first quarter of the year, of which a very respectable 1.1mn, or 34.6pc of total sales, were EVs of some kind (see Fig.1). But hybrids (HEVs) made up the lion’s share of those volumes, shifting almost 1,045,000 units for a 32.6pc share of total Toyota sales.