Toyota Only Expects to Sell 10,000 bZ4Xs This Year

Photo: Toyota

Last year, Toyota had to stop selling the electric bZ4X due to a minor problem where the wheels were at risk of falling off. You know. Just a typical new car quirk. That’s also a big reason the Japanese automaker only sold about 1,200 bZ4Xs in the entirety of 2022. But now that Toyota’s figured out a way to keep the wheels on its electric vehicle, 2023 is the year it will finally take on Tesla, right? Not exactly.

Car and Driver reports that Toyota only intends to sell about 10,000 bZ4Xs this year, which, as the author points out, is less than the number of GR86s that it sold last year. That 10,000 number is certainly a lot more than 1,200, but compared to the rest of its competitors, it’s not a lot. Ford sold about 40,000 Mach-Es in 2022, while Tesla sold more than 200,000 Model Ys.

According to Toyota, that’s by design. It can reportedly build six RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrids with the same number of materials it takes to build one bZ4X. And if we’re talking Priuses, that number rises to 90. Because of that, Toyota would rather focus on hybrids over EVs.

That said, Toyota does reportedly plan to launch a new marketing campaign later this year to remind potential customers that the bZ4X still exists even if they’ve already forgotten about it or never knew it existed in the first place. But that marketing campaign won’t roll out until May.

Currently, though, even if people do know the bZ4X exists and want to buy one, they may still have a hard time doing so. There are only about 500 listed on Autotrader in the entire country. But hey, if you want a hybrid, your local dealer would probably be happy to sell you one of those. Toyota has a lot of hybrids.