BEIJING - Toyota's annual global sales of electrified vehicles could reach 5.5 million in 2025, five years earlier than initially planned, a senior company executive said at an industry conference on Tuesday.
Toyota in 2017 had announced a plan to sell 5.5 million electrified vehicles, including 4.5 million of hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles and 1 million electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, by 2030.
Seiya Nakao, chairman and president of Toyota China's engineering and manufacturing, said vehicle electrification was progressing faster than expected and the top Japanese carmaker thinks it can reach the target sooner.
A China-based Toyota spokesman said 2025 was not a formal company target now.
Toyota sold more than 10 million vehicles globally last year, including around 2 million electrified vehicles.
The carmaker has led in technologies for hybrid and fuel cell vehicles, but it has trailed rivals such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Tesla in bringing fully electric vehicles to showrooms.
It has been developing its own lithium-ion EV battery technology for decades, and has teamed up with Panasonic to pool together resources to develop and manufacture rectangular-shaped prismatic batteries in the coming years.
Last year Toyota also announced it was teaming up with Subaru to jointly develop a battery-electric SUV on a platform produced together as they seek to split development costs.
Reuters