Toyota's Cheapest EV Grew While the US Market Shrank 46.9%

Toyota sold 4,964 units of its bZ electric SUV in the U.S. in August 2026, up 35% from July and roughly five times the just-over-1,000 units it sold in August 2025, according to an EVSHIFT report on Cox Automotive's August EV Market Monitor. The gain came in a month when total U.S. EV sales fell 46.9% year-over-year, even as they rose 2.5% from July, a divergence Cox Automotive, Kelley Blue Book's parent company, ties to the $7,500 federal EV tax credit expiring in September 2025, which pulled a wave of 2025 purchases forward and left 2026 comparisons looking weak by contrast.

Toyota's overall EV sales climbed 34.9% month-over-month, enough to make it the second-best-selling EV brand in the U.S. behind Tesla, which sold 40,816 vehicles for a 51.7% share of the market even after its own sales fell 3.8% from July, Electrek reported, citing the same Cox Automotive data set. Rivian, Hyundai and Cadillac rounded out the top five new-EV sellers, EVSHIFT reported, while Ford's Mustang Mach-E fell 55% year-over-year to 15,484 units sold through August.

Why $34,980 is the number that explains the month

The bZ's entry trim, the XLE FWD, starts at $34,980 with 236 miles of range, and a longer-range FWD Plus trim starts at $37,980 with 314 miles, Electrek reported, both well under the $54,754 average transaction price Cox Automotive recorded across all new EVs in August, itself down 1.3% from July and 2.8% from a year earlier. The gap between EV and gas-vehicle average prices narrowed to $4,847 in August, EVSHIFT reported, the smallest premium Cox Automotive has tracked as EV pricing keeps compressing toward combustion-engine territory. Toyota's bZ Woodland trim, by contrast, starts at $45,380, and the company's C-HR starts at $37,080, positioning Toyota's EV lineup across a spread that captures both budget and mid-tier buyers rather than competing only at the top.

1. Toyota bZ35 percent
2. Toyota (all EVs)34.9 percent
3. Overall US EV market2.5 percent
4. Tesla-3.8 percent

Source: Cox Automotive, via EVSHIFT, accessed 2026-09-18

Automaker	August 2026 change
Toyota bZ	+35% from July
Toyota (all EVs)	+34.9% from July
Overall US market	+2.5% from July, -46.9% year-over-year
Tesla	-3.8% from July

What the year-to-date number hides

Toyota has now sold over 22,500 bZ units through the first eight months of 2026, Electrek reported, already well past the 15,609 bZ4X units Toyota sold in all of 2025. Neither Cox Automotive nor Electrek's report says how much of August's jump reflects genuine demand growth versus Toyota simply having more bZ inventory on dealer lots than a year earlier, when the model was newer and supply-constrained; a low base year makes a 35% monthly gain easier to produce than the same percentage gain would be against a mature sales volume. Tesla, still selling more than eight times August's bZ volume by Cox Automotive's own manufacturer rankings, remains the brand Toyota's bZ is chasing rather than catching, even with Tesla's own sales moving in the opposite direction this month. The Hyundai Staria Electric's European pricing shows the same pattern playing out on a different continent: undercutting a direct rival by even a few hundred euros moves order volume in a market where EV buyers are newly price-sensitive on both sides of the Atlantic.

The number to watch next month is whether Toyota's growth rate holds once its own year-ago comparison stops being a supply-constrained launch quarter. August's 35% gain was measured against a base of roughly 1,000 units; by early 2027, Toyota will be comparing against months that already had thousands of bZs on the road, and a market still down nearly half from August 2025's tax-credit rush gives Toyota less room to keep posting numbers like this one.