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Read about Our 2024 Autoweek Vanguard Award, Company

2024 autoweek vanguard award company
2024 Autoweek Vanguard Award, CompanyHearst Owned

The automotive world was pivoting toward battery-electric vehicles a few years ago, and just about all the major automakers we climbing onboard. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Ford, and others announced ambitious plans to convert all or a portion of their fleets to EVs by a certain deadline. They all wanted to be Tesla.

Conspicuously quiet through it all was Toyota Motor Corp., which seemed odd because the Japanese juggernaut had earned the title as the world’s largest global automaker in three of the last four years. Toyota had the resources to dive headfirst into the EV waters, but it didn’t.

2024 autoweek vanguard award company
Hearst Owned

Instead, Toyota doubled down on what it does best—hybrids—and it turned out to be the right strategy when the EV sales pace began slowing. Many of those other automakers are now doing what Toyota has done all along—expanding its hybrid and plug-in hybrid offerings in response to a changing marketplace.

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For correctly reading the tea leaves—while charting its own path toward reduced vehicle emissions—Toyota earns an Autoweek Vanguard Award, Company, for 2024.

Battery-electric vehicles are a fickle business. Sure, lots of EVs are in market now, but they’re generally expensive and the charging infrastructure is a long way from competing with gas stations in terms of numbers and reliability. (There’s about 200k gas stations in America and about 70k EV charging stations, according to the US Department of Energy.)

So what’s an environmentally minded consumer to do, especially one on a budget who logs a lot of miles?

toyota prius firstgen
The first-generation Prius was the shape of things to come.toyota

In practical terms, the next best thing to an EV is a full hybrid, and Toyota has managed after three decades of marketing them to drive down the price premium.

The 2024 Toyota Corolla (with estimated 32/41 mpg) carries a base price of $23,185 with destination, and the hybrid version is an extra $1,500 with an efficiency rating of 53/46 mpg in city/highway driving. The more you drive that hybrid, the sooner you pay off the cost difference.

Expertise with hybrids—and now plug-in hybrids—is paying off for Toyota, as shoppers are showing great interest. In 2023, Toyota’s electrified vehicle sales in the US (mostly hybrids) surged 30% to 657,327 vehicles, making up nearly one-third of all Toyota and Lexus sales combined. Globally, Toyota sold 3.4 million hybrids last year.

Toyota’s hybrid vehicle lineup blows every other automaker out of the water: 29 models in all, including Lexus, and many of these are new this year: Tacoma, Tundra, Highlander/Grand Highlander, Sequoia, Camry, Corolla, and RAV4.

And these new models are hybrid only: the new Land Cruiser, Crown, Crown Signia, Sienna, and Prius. Ironically, the Prius, which blazed the hybrid trail nearly 30 years ago and has been fully redesigned, is not selling well, perhaps because Toyota showrooms are full of so many other hybrids.

The 2025 4Runner will be both hybrid and standard ICE. Plug-in hybrids are available too, including Prius, RAV4, and Lexus NX, RX, and TX.

akio toyoda surrounded by toyota and lexus product in 2021
Akio Toyoda, surrounded by Toyota and Lexus product in 2021.Toyota

Oprah must be running around Toyota City shouting, “YOU get a hybrid, and YOU get a hybrid!” Toyota is rapidly approaching the point at which half its US sales will be hybrids.

If these hybrids were poky, loud, and crude, then we have no business giving such an award.

But these are enjoyable vehicles to drive—without the powertrain jerkiness of years ago—and they are logging some truly impressive observed fuel economy. That’s an important environmental consideration for the many shoppers who need more time before buying their first EV.

Other automakers are following Toyota’s hybrid lead. Honda’s hybrid lineup is much smaller but growing, and they are selling in huge numbers. Through July, 51% of Honda Accord sales were hybrids (that’s more than 41k vehicles). Likewise, Honda sold 197k hybrid CR-Vs last year, well above the 164k ICE-only CR-Vs. Those are big numbers.

Ford wants a hybrid variant of everything in its lineup by the end of the decade, and General Motors is fast-tracking hybrids, too.

Akio Toyoda stepped down as Toyota CEO last year, partially under pressure for slow-rolling the automaker into the EV era. But he turned out to be right in viewing internal-combustion engines and hybrids as part of a broader solution to reducing emissions as EVs and the charging infrastructure continue evolving.

Not only did he make Toyota synonymous with hybrid technology, but he also pushed Toyota product planners to build better-looking, enthusiast-focused cars.

So even though many other automakers wanted to be Tesla not long ago, now many of them want to be Toyota, possibly for more reasons than making hybrids.

Also worth noting: For the fiscal year ending March 31, Toyota forecasts net income of $24.6 billion.

Do you think Toyota is on the right product path? Please comment below.