Toyota was the world’s best-selling carmaker in 2022, overcoming COVID disruptions and semiconductor shortages to move almost 10.5 million vehicles between January and December.
Including volumes for its Daihatsu and Hino subsidiaries, the automaker sold a total of 10,438,024 vehicles, putting it more than 2 million units ahead of Volkswagen Group, which reported 2022 sales of 8.3 million vehicles earlier this month.
While global production actually improved 5 percent to 10.6 million, Toyota’s overall 2022 sales figures were down 0.1 percent on 2021’s figures, and sales in Japan dropped by 9.6 percent to 1.9 million. But that disappointment was countered by strong export sales that climbed by 2.3 percent to 8.58 million.
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Unfortunately that export growth didn’t come from the U.S. We learned a couple of weeks back that Toyota North America (including Lexus) sold 2.1 million vehicles during 2022, which is an impressive achievement in isolation, but represented an almost 10 percent fall over the previous year’s tally, and allowed General Motors (whose sales grew by 2.5 percent) to sneak back to the top spot.
Toyota says that strong demand in Asia was largely responsible for it managing to keep its overall performance broadly in line with its achievements in 2021 as it battled supply restrictions. Those issues were still present and limiting Toyota’s output in December 2022, and the carmaker says the “situation remains difficult.” But most carmakers expect those supply disruptions to ease in the second half of 2023, and Toyota is currently expected to match 2022’s 10.6 million production run this year, providing there aren’t any unforeseen breakdowns in the supply chain.