Toyota and Lexus end 2025 with another record-breaking run
Toyota invited members of the media for a small briefing on their 2025 year-end sales performance review before their traditional Thanksgiving party last Thursday. The highlights showed Toyota still dominating at 46% market share, with a total of 227,595 units sold, an improvement of 5.2% versus 2024 which is an impressive achievement given a somewhat flat market growth in Q3 and Q4 last year. Of these cars, 17,824 units were electrified units showing a strong demand for hybrids and battery electric vehicles in the market as a whole. The best selling Toyota models were led by perennial market leader Vios at 27,811 units, followed by the Avanza at 24,704 units and finally the Hilux pick-up with 23,735 units sold.
For Toyota’s completely knock-down (CKD) production highlights, with a total of 63,803 produced locally at Toyota’s Santa Rosa facility in Laguna. The Vios of course contributed to the majority of local production, followed by the Tamarraw which to date has sold 17,524, and the ever-popular Toyota Innova with 18,468 units made locally for 2025.
While 2025 was a slow year in terms of new model releases (the Ativ, the bz4x BEV, the GR Corolla and multiple in-house variants for the Tamarraw), Toyota plans to unveil five new models in the first half of 2026, which include the Urban Cruiser BEV, the RAV4 and new FJ Cruiser which were unveiled at last year’s Japan Mobility Show 2025, the full-size hybrid Land Cruiser LC300 and the new Hilux which was unveiled in Bangkok last year. When asked about the new GR GT sports car, Toyota Motor Philippines President Masando Hashimoto said that there is no official word on availability yet but he says there is also no reason why it should not, as it is the group’s new performance hero car.
Lexus, the luxury brand of Toyota on the other hand dominated the luxury segment as well with a 52% market share. The Japanese marque sold 1,852 units, with 1,692 being electrified units, again representing a strong affinity with hybrids and battery electric vehicles in the Philippine market.
The brand’s top selling models were the NX with 735 units followed by the RXh with 312 units and finally the LMh with 296 units.
For 2026, Lexus plans to unveil a heavily revised IS sports sedan as well as a full model change for the ES mid-size executive luxury sedan.
Combined, Toyota and Lexus have made a sizeable contribution to the Philippine Economy in nation building: there are now 83,000++ team members directly employed by Toyota Motor Philippines and its affiliated and subsidiaries representing 3.9 Billion Pesos in salaries, wages and other employee benefits. It has generated business worth P17 billion procuring from local suppliers, and has paid P43 billion in taxes and duties to the Philippine Government. It has also exported one billion dollars worth of automotive goods abroad.
Despite what looks to be a difficult 2026 based on current economic indicators, Hashimoto-san says they are confident that the industry, and of course Toyota will grow based in the strength of OFW remittances and an overall increase in demand for the Filipino to become independently mobile.
Though unofficial, the industry expects a potential 2026 total combined vehicle sales to be in the range of 490,000 to 510,000, an achievable target coming from 2025’s total of 491,395 units.
While around 65-68% of industry total vehicle sales are often attributed to NCR, Region 3 (Central Luzon) and Region 4A (CALABARZON), these regions were also flat during the latter part of 2025. An insider said that strong industry growth was seen in Regions 5, 8 and 9 among others, reflecting Toyota’s own experience for 2025. These regions helped push vehicle sales while the core market of NCR, Region 3 and 4A were flat.
So despite a tumultuous 2025, there’s hope yet for the industry to achieve new heights in 2026!
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