Toyota expects one in three RAV4s sold in Australia will be a PHEV

Toyota Australia predicts strong sales for its new products RAV4 plug-in hybrid (PHEV)with the brand’s local vice president of marketing and sales saying nearly one in three RAV4 sales will be a plug-in model.

In conversation with Daily Sparkz At the launch of the new generation 2026 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, John Pappas, vice president of sales and marketing at Toyota Australia, said the Japanese brand expects 30 percent of sales in the first year to be PHEV models.

“We expect that the plug-in hybrid will account for around 30 percent of order intake in the first 12 months at full capacity,” Mr. Pappas said.

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For reference, Mr. Pappas also confirmed at the event that the company’s dealer network had taken more than 10,000 pre-orders for the new RAV4 before it went into wholesale, and expects the SUV nameplate to return over 40,000 registrations for the 2026 calendar year (including discontinued examples of the old model).

Given that only 3842 RAV4s have been delivered in Australia by the end of March as Toyota phases out the old generation, at least 35,000+ new generation RAV4s will land on Australian roads for the rest of the year, and Mr Pappas’ predictions suggest around 10,000 of these could be PHEVs very rough math.

Such volume would catapult Toyota onto the PHEV sales podium based on last year’s numbers, with only the BYD Shark 6 PHEV ute surpassing 10,000 registrations in calendar year 2025, while the BYD Sealion 6 SUV takes second place with 9055 registrations.

Toyota would also overtake PHEV pioneer Mitsubishi and its Outlander PHEV – a direct competitor to the RAV4 PHEV – which took third place with 4,110 registrations in 2025.