UK Number One for Lexus European hybrid electric car sales

The UK remains the strongest market in Europe for Lexus’s self-charging hybrid electric cars, with 123,700 sales since the introduction of the RX 400h, the world’s first luxury hybrid model, in 2004. That figure is more than a quarter of the 431,372 cumulative total recorded across the wider European region.

These figures are prominent within Lexus’s contribution to the 15 million sales milestone for all Toyota Motor Corporation hybrids, announced this week. Around the world, almost 1.75 million Lexus hybrids have been sold.

 

Almost exclusively hybrid

The UK model range, in common with other Western European markets, is today almost exclusively hybrid: at the end of March this year, hybrids accounted for 99.7 per cent of the Lexus new car sales mix in the UK. Across its combined European markets, the figure is 69 per cent, the highest of any of its global sales regions.

Changing customer preferences have reshaped the market, with SUVs now dominating the sales charts in place of traditional luxury saloons and coupes. In the UK, Lexus’s most popular models are all from this category – the best-selling NX mid-size SUV, the new UX compact model and the latest generation of the original Lexus hybrid, the large RX luxury SUV.

In the 16 years since the RX 400h’s debut, Lexus has constantly improved the performance of its hybrid technology to provide even greater fuel and emissions efficiency and deliver a more involving driving experience, most notably with its world-first Multi Stage Hybrid System which debuted on the LC 500h flagship coupe.

The line-up continues to evolve and at the end of 2020 the first model in the Lexus Electrified strategy will be introduced in the UK, the UX 300e, Lexus’s first all-electric model.