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In 2025, approximately **** million passenger cars were produced in Japan, up from about **** million units in the previous year. The total domestic production volume reached approximately **** million vehicles, which includes buses and trucks next to passenger cars.

HEVs are Toyota's new standard

In 2024, roughly of new passenger car registrations in Japan by automobile giant Toyota were hybrid electric vehicles. The company's number of HEV registrations more than ** that of gasoline-based cars in that year, showing a clear trend away from vehicles running purely on internal combustion engines towards newer technologies. Despite Toyota's stated intention to rapidly grow its battery electric vehicle sales, domestic results were still disappointingly low, while global sales performed better, but were still far less popular compared to their hybrid counterpart.

Will FCEV eventually catch on?

Japanese manufacturers had high hopes for hydrogen technology in the automotive sector to reduce carbon emissions. A seamless transition to fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) presupposes low-carbon hydrogen production and adequate infrastructure. Both these aspects require serious investments and time to be implemented, and the progress in Japan is stagnating. Above all, the willingness of Japanese people to trust this new technology is necessary. If FCEVs are to play a more important role in the future of Japan's automobile industry, persuasive arguments to choose FCEVs over other types of vehicles are required. Currently, FCEVs play a very minor role in the car market in Japan.