Tokyo: Sales of electric vehicles in Japan fell 33% year-on-year to 59,736 cars in 2024, the first decline in four years, according to data from car dealers and importers compiled by Nikkei on Thursday.
EVs’ share of all vehicle sales fell below 2% in Japan, the lowest among major advanced economies. While global EV sales are still growing, albeit more slowly, Japan’s reluctance to adopt EVs is becoming increasingly apparent.
Nissan Motor, which has around half of Japan’s EV market, was still the biggest seller of such vehicles, but saw its sales tumble 44% from a year earlier to 30,749 cars, the fewest since 2021. Sales of the Sakura, an electric version of Japan’s signature lightweight kei minicars, plummeted 38% to 22,926 cars, while those of the Leaf nosedived 48%.
Other Japanese automakers have also had a hard time. Toyota’s first mass-market EV, the bZ4X, posted a modest 10% rise in sales to 1,012 cars. Prices for the model start at 5.5 million yen ($34,755). This helped spur sales of cheaper hybrid vehicles. The company’s total EV sales decreased by 30% to 2,038 cars.
Mitsubishi Motors sold 2,504 cars, 64% fewer than the previous year. Honda ended production of the Honda e in the summer of 2024.
While Japanese automakers lost market share, Chinese and South Korean manufacturers saw their sales rise.
BYD, which entered the market in 2023, saw a 54% year-on-year increase, with sales of 2,223 cars. Although the Chinese EV specialist still lags behind local players like Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors, its sales are now about 40% as high as Tesla of the U.S., the top-selling imported EV brand in Japan.
BYD’s growth was driven by the Seal, a sedan that made its debut in 2024 as a competitor to Tesla’s Model 3. “We saw an increase in the number of store visitors, which also drove sales of our existing models,” a BYD representative told Nikkei. The success of the model was partly thanks to the compact EV Dolphin, a lower-priced limited edition starting at 2.99 million yen.
Hyundai Motor saw a 24% rise in EV sales to 607 cars in 2024. The South Korean automaker rolled out new models, including an updated Ioniq 5 and the Ioniq 5N high-performance model. Hyundai plans to further promote EV sales in Japan with a value-oriented small EV slated to go on sale in the spring of 2025.