Toyota predicts its 2024 sales will grow despite declining market

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Toyota Australia is expecting a boost in sales heading into 2024, backed by increased supply from the factory, yet says the market as a whole is likely to decline. 

The Japanese brand exited 2023 head and shoulders over its competitors in the sales charts with a total of 215,240 vehicles delivered, as the wider industry saw more vehicles sold than ever before in the year that was.

After a slow start for Toyota in the first half of the year, an increase in supply bolstered the brand’s overall sales numbers with Mazda the next nearest competitor with 100,008 sales, followed by Ford with 87,800. 

Although a strong lead, Toyota technically sold fewer vehicles than in 2022, with its market share dropping from 21.4 percent to 17.7. Even still, 2023 marked Toyota’s 21st year in the lead.

Speaking to Chasing Cars following the release of the sales results, Toyota Australia vice president of sales, marketing and franchise operations Sean Hanley said he expected a bounce-back in 2024.

“I believe the market for 2024 will be around 1.05 to 1.1 million units, however, that’s still a strong result. If you go back in time, it’s not that many years ago, [the Australian market was] doing over a million sales in a year, and we felt that was a strong result,” he said.

Put in other terms, Hanley said he expected the market to return to “pre-covid” levels, shortly before the sales boom and subsequent supply constraints took effect. In 2023 year, over 1.2 million vehicles were sold in Australia. 

In a year soured by skyrocketing cost of living and interest rates, Hanley said the boom in sales seen in 2023 was likely more the result of carryover demand and long wait times for vehicles from 2022, and even 2021, but he expected the market would cool off in the coming year.

His thoughts have been echoed by FCAI chief executive Tony Weber who said in a statement today that the Australian car industry could expect a “challenging 2024”, as a result of the aforementioned factors.

Despite this, Hanley said increased supply from Toyota’s global factories would lead to another strong year for the brand. 

“Our forecast is that our supply is very strong, our momentum going out from 2023 into 2024, in terms of sales is strong. Our customer order bank is extremely healthy and solid,” he said. 

“So when you look at that, in its totality and the supply of RAV4 Hybrids, particularly in the first quarter, as a result, we expect to increase our sales volume in 2024 over 2023.”

RAV4 Hybrid wait times set to decrease

Toyota has said it expects the consistently increased flow-through of stock to continue for the coming year, a factor it says should trim wait times on most models down to between four to six months by mid-year “if not sooner”.

Hanley said wait times around RAV4 Hybrid we expected to improve dramatically, with lead times of around three to four months expected by mid-year.