Tundra Buyers Are Walking Past the Hybrid

Sales of the gas-only Toyota Tundra jumped 26.4% in October to 10,035 trucks, while the i-FORCE MAX hybrid version fell 20.9% to 2,269, its sixth straight monthly decline.

The split runs against the rest of Toyota’s lineup. Across the company, electrified vehicles rose 34.6% in October to 126,054 sales and gas-only models fell 16.4% to 95,453, which left total US sales up 6.5% at 221,507 vehicles. The full-size pickup is the one place where buyers are moving the other way, and the hybrid now makes up less than a fifth of the roughly 12,300 Tundras Toyota sold last month.

The figures were reported by the San Antonio Express-News, which follows the trucks because both the Tundra and the Sequoia are built at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas on the city’s South Side. The paper said the gas Tundra was the only San Antonio-built model to post an increase in October, with 2,094 more trucks sold than a year earlier. Toyota Motor North America has not published a monthly release of its own for October.

The hybrid’s slide was already showing in Toyota’s own numbers. Its third-quarter sales tables counted 2,113 Tundra hybrids in September, down 19.9%, and 20,574 for the first nine months of the year, down 6.8%. The Tundra as a whole was nearly flat over the same stretch at 110,080 sales, down 0.8%, which means the gas trucks were already making up for what the hybrid was losing before October widened the gap.

The Sequoia, which is sold only as a hybrid, also slipped. Its October sales fell 10.1% to 2,330, ending a run of five straight monthly gains, according to the Express-News. It had been one of the brighter spots in the lineup through September, with 21,403 sales for the year, up 15.8%, and September alone up 19.4% to 2,431. Toyota detailed the refreshed 2027 Sequoia on November 4, including the first Sequoia Trailhunter, and said in its release that the updated SUV will start at $69,900.

The San Antonio plant is about to get busier regardless. Toyota is adding a second assembly line there to build the Tacoma, which the paper said will add capacity for 150,000 Tacomas a year to the plant’s 200,000 Tundras and Sequoias, along with 2,000 jobs, as part of a $3.6 billion expansion that doubles the size of the complex by 2030.

The Toyota Report Take

The i-FORCE MAX was supposed to be the Tundra’s headline powertrain, yet buyers who can choose are increasingly taking the cheaper gas engine, and six months of decline is a trend rather than a blip. With the hybrid’s fuel savings modest in a truck this size, Toyota either needs to narrow the price gap or give the hybrid something the gas truck cannot match, because right now the market has made its call.

More on the Sequoia

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• Toyota Texas Tops 4,000 Workers Ahead of the Tacoma Move