New 2026 Toyota RAV4 could make history as Australia’s first electrified and SUV top-seller
Toyota is predicting its new RAV4 could become the first electrified vehicle and SUV to top Australia’s new car sales charts, with the company planning to sell more than 50,000 of the mid-size family hauler this year.
Toyota Australia vice president John Pappas said the company was confident the new-generation RAV4 – which arrived in showrooms last month – would be its best-selling model in 2026, and that overall chart-topping honours were a genuine possibility.
“We’re planning on doing over 50,000 RAV4s next year,” Pappas told EV Central. “We think it’ll be our number one seller.”
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The hybrid version of the new RAV4 has just gone on-sale with the plug-in hybird version due later in the year.
The big question is whether 50,000 sales will be enough to outgun everything else on the sales charts.
Ford Ranger sales peaked in 2023 with 63,356 reported as sold, but have been gradually sliding since, still posting an impressive 56,655 sales in 2025.
Ranger sales for the first three months of 2026 are down almost eight per cent, but the brand has a significant update coming that will presumably kick things along.
All of which sets the scene for an epic brawl at the top of the Aussie sales charts.
An SUV has never topped Australia’s annual new car sales charts, with utes – led in recent years by the Ford Ranger and Toyota’s own Hilux (which soon arrives as a Hilux EV) – having dominated the top of the VFACTS leaderboard for more than a decade.
Before that it was small cars such as the Toyota Corolla and Mazda3 and before that locally-made Holdens and Fords.
Pappas suggested early demand for the new RAV4 could push volumes even higher than planned.
“On the initial orders that we’ve got so far and the interest we’ve got, it could do well above that (50,000),” he said. “So in terms of overachieving our sales plan, we’ll see.”
The bullish prediction is underpinned by a broadened RAV4 range that, for the first time, includes the PHEV option alongside the existing regular hybrid.
Pappas said Toyota expected PHEVs to account for around 30 per cent of RAV4 sales once those variants arrive later in 2026; until then it’s the regular hybrid models doing the heavy lifting.
“The PHEV has come at a really good time,” he said, pointing to surging global demand for electrified vehicles.
“Our hybrid demand right now is significantly growing compared to a couple of years ago – and it’s not only here in Australia, hybrid demand globally is going very, very strong.”
That in itself is making securing stock trickier for Toyota in Australia.
“It’s harder for us to try and get these cars because the global demand on hybrids is so strong.”
The new RAV4 range starts at $45,990 before on-road costs for the entry-level GX hybrid and stretches to $66,340 for the new range-topping GR Sport, which is available only as a PHEV with all-wheel drive.
Should the RAV4 top the charts in 2026, it would mark a historic shift in Australian new car buying – the first time a passenger-style SUV has outsold the utes and commercial vehicles that have long dominated the national leaderboard.
