Oh what a fumble, Toyota
The king of Australia's car market is about to lose its crown
Last month, China's BYD, the world's largest EV seller, was a mere 243 car sales short of dethroning Toyota at the top of the Australian car market – a position it has maintained virtually uninterrupted for more than 20 years. Having spent the last 10 years defending its lack of an EV strategy, Toyota now stands virtually defenceless against the onslaught of Chinese brands luring Aussie buyers with their tech-laden, value-packed cars and attractive finance. This will surely go down as one of the great fumbles of modern Australian commerce.
After inheriting the family car buyer from Holden, just as SUVs superseded the sedan in popularity, Toyota has dined on its reputation of reliability and resale value, releasing staid iterations of its top selling models. There's no finer example of this than the facelifted Landcruiser 300 series, which only received wireless Apple CarPlay in 2025, a feature standard in most Australian cars many years earlier.
Toyota's strategy centred around diversification of powertrains and insisting the customer would determine the pace of the transition. Toyota focused on hybrid cars after the roaring success of the Prius. What it failed to anticipate was Australia's rush to electrification, fueled by geopolitical disruption, timely government battery rebates and an invasion of Chinese alternatives.
Australia's appetite for electric vehicles has been insatiable since the beginning of 2026, exploding in market share from 8.4 per cent in January to 23.3 per cent in June. Four out of every five of those were manufactured in China – including the Shanghai-built Tesla Model Y, which clocked 8,072 sales last month. While Tesla produced the best-selling model of the month, it's the threat from BYD that will worry Toyota. The Chinese challenger sold more than 10,174 EVs in June and a further 7,707 plug-in hybrid vehicles.
