Toyota's Hybrids Clean Up in First Quarter

Toyota’s multi-energy powertrain strategy, led by its gas and plug-in hybrids, continues to bear fruit with first-quarter revenues smashing stock market expectations.

The automaker sees operating profit shoot up 78% year-on-year from January to March and for the full year it broke a Japanese company record, totaling 5.35 trillion yen ($34.5 billion).

While a weak yen helped its results, the cooling of demand for battery-electric vehicles saw many consumers in its main markets switch to alternative powertrains, boosting sales for Toyota’s hybrid products.

The results will go a long way toward silencing industry critics who predicted disaster for the automaker’s strategy that appeared to be a grudging adoption of BEV technology. Indeed, it shows Toyota was less convinced that consumers would ignore BEV range challenges and the rate of rollout of vital public charging infrastructure.

In fact, in keeping with its realistic view of global markets, Toyota expects a whopping 20% decline in profit to just 4.3 trillion yen in the year to March 2025, while it invests heavily in labor force costs at supplies and dealers on top of more development of its multi-powertrain strategy.

By markets, it sees sales revenues in North America increase 29.6% to 17.9 billion yen and profits boosted by marketing and cost-reduction efforts. The performance was even better in Europe, with revenues climbing 32.9%, helped by last year’s recording of losses attributed to the termination of vehicle production in Russia post the invasion of Ukraine.

Sales revenues in Asia increased 8.5% while in other markets, including Central and South America, Oceania, Africa and the Middle East, revenues increased 26.4%. 

Toyota CEO Koji Sato tells a press conference after release of the figures: “We'll make investments in order to firmly protect the supply chain. Even though our operations are run very efficiently, there are many things that still need to be changed to some extent.”