Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai Dominate the Surging US Hybrid Car Market

Hybrids are what some are calling the most important growth story in the U.S. Car market. Hybrid vehicles. Hybrid vehicle. A lot more hybrids. The hybrid. Just a few years ago, some of the largest automakers in the US and the world were going fully electric. In June 2026, EVs were only about 6% of new car sales down since the end of 2025. Instead, it's hybrids that have soared, and one company sells half of them. Toyota. The Japanese automaker took criticism for being pretty slow to the EV revolution, but it bet the transition would take longer than many expected.

And right now, the market is vindicating that. Our success in hybrids is an overnight success that took 30 years in the making. And hybrids deliver the meaningful fuel savings without requiring changes in driving habits or charging infrastructure. Honda had to spend $16 billion restructuring its EV business, leading to its first ever annual loss in 70 years as a public company. Now its hybrids are setting U.S. sales records. We're extremely happy with how our hybrids have been doing. The two companies that first marketed them in the US more than 25 years ago, are still among the top

makers. One fast follower is starting to challenge them. Many others remain on the sidelines, but as hybrid shares surges, that is liable to change. Hybrid electric vehicle volume was up nearly 20% in the first half of 2026. Their share of total vehicles sold reached a record 15.4%, more than double that of EVs. Fuel prices are high, and hybrids offer savings without having to adjust to charging. The only growth we're seeing is in hybrid market share. All other propulsion systems have lost market share year to date. What's different today is hybrids are in vehicles people already want to buy. And in almost every case, the hybrid has sold faster

and has had more sold orders, meaning the customer is willing to wait for the car than the internal combustion engine or other powertrains. So we really feel like that is the market voice that is the customer voice. There are now 49 hybrid vehicles in the US across 12 brands. Eight models are exclusively hybrid. Demand might actually be a lot higher than these sales numbers suggest. Consumers want the vehicles. The problem is there are relatively few automakers that offer those vehicles. I think there is definitely a growing segment of the population that are hybrid buyers specifically, and wouldn't really consider much else.

Look again at this list of the top hybrid sellers, the two automakers that were first to the US market in hybrids at the end of the millennium are still at the top. Toyota dominates since it debuted the Prius in the US in 2000, it has consistently and heavily invested in hybrids much more than competitors. We really brought it out at a time when hybrid technology probably wasn't necessary, but we felt a long term commitment to the technology, and we felt that putting it in our lineup was good for consumers. That long term bet has paid off. Toyota sells more than twice as many hybrids as its closest rivals, Hyundai Motor Group and Honda. In 2025, it sold more than a million.

We have a lot of vehicles where we offer an internal combustion engine and a hybrid powertrain, and the hybrid is actually selling faster than the internal combustion engines. Still, Honda set a hybrid sales record for the first half of 2026. More than half of Honda Cr-V crossovers, Honda's best US seller were hybrid, a record for June, the quarter and the first half. At the moment, Toyota owes its lead to breadth. It has vehicles in nearly every segment, and its two biggest overall sellers are hybrid only. Honda sells four hybrid models, but that's a big chunk of its lineup.

Its Acura brand doesn't have any hybrids right now. The company has a new system on the way that it will use to widen its offerings. We'd always like to be number one. The biggest thing for us is going to be introducing that next generation of systems that's for bigger vehicles, right? So our limitation right now is that the Cr-V and the accord are the biggest vehicle that we can really offer with this hybrid system. And so we're coming out with that V6 based system that'll be on all of our larger vehicles. At that point, there's really nothing to stop us in terms of battling it out with anybody in terms of hybrids.

Many rivals have either taken smaller steps or ditched products. GM has just one hybrid in its US lineup right now, the Corvette E-Ray. GM jumped straight to EVs while preserving its bread and butter business in large pickups and SUVs. GM president Mark Reuss has told me over and over that he feels that it's a transitional technology and that if the end goal is EVs and that was GM's end goal, then why do hybrids? Gm told CNBC in an email. Customer demand is strong across our portfolio, and especially in our core segments, and hybrids do have a role in our future product plans. But it's taking them quite a while.

These are manufacturing issues. These are marketing issues. These are product issues to find the right product to drop these powertrains in, and those issues take time. Ford sells two hybrids under its flagship Blue Oval brand and one hybrid in its Lincoln lineup. You could say it has four if you include the hybrid Police Interceptor. Stellantis added a hybrid to the Jeep Cherokee for the first time. The company leaned heavily on suppliers to make it happen. Because it was not in their wheelhouse, and they were already having problems with their plug-in electric hybrids.

So, leaning on a supplier already helps them bring this to market. It helps with the durability, it helps with the testing. And I think what we're going to see is a lot more companies kind of, who aren't necessarily in the game yet, do exactly what Stellantis did and lead towards suppliers until they can develop their own technology. The competitive landscape for hybrids is going to get a lot tougher in the coming years. You have brands like Hyundai and Kia saying that they are going to go very heavily into hybrids. We're starting to see that already.

Ford Motor Company ditched their EV plans, essentially, aside from new platform to say we are going to lean into hybrids. The only other company that has had such a robust hybrid lineup is Hyundai Motor Group, which includes Hyundai, Genesis and Kia. In the latest data I could find, HMG has now surpassed Honda and is number two in total sales. Hybrid is the fastest growing piece of our business, so we almost doubled our sales of hybrids last year and we expected the same this year.

Is a hybrid lineup something that brings people to a Kia dealership? Like is it something that, you know, attracts people to the brand? It absolutely is. I think that over the last few years, more and more manufacturers are adding hybrids. But one of the things we've been doing is we're adding it on almost every single one of our SUVs and the MPV in our lineup. And I think that's bringing a lot of new buyers that would not have considered Kia before. Hyundai and Kia didn't simply benefit from more consumers wanting hybrids, they filled major gaps in their lineup.

Many, if not most in the industry still consider EVs the future. While U.S. EV share is still under 6%, the global share is above 14%. A few countries are almost totally EV, but in the US, it's a mix and likely will be for a while. Forecaster Alan Baum expects hybrids share to go from an expected 16% in 2026 to a quarter of the market by 2030. He expects EVs to be about 9.5%. Toyota has three EVs in the US, with a fourth on the way, what it calls electrified vehicles, hybrids, plug-ins and EVs altogether were 57% of sales in June 2026.

We see that growing well over 60%, probably close to 70%, over the next few years. Very quickly, it's going to be the majority of sales and then maybe not ever going to 100%. We will continue to offer normal gasoline engines in our vehicles and kind of depending on the segment for various reasons. But heading towards a large majority, probably around, you know, the beginning of the next decade. Robinson said Acura, which currently has no EVs or hybrids, will probably start moving more quickly toward electrification than the Honda brand. So basically, we have to do it all and we have to be good at it all and sort of balance the

costs and the efficiency and all the engineering and everything. And so it's difficult. But I think that's the challenge of today's auto market.