Toyota Motor North America sold 215,556 vehicles in the U.S. last month, according to Reuters’ report on Toyota’s official sales release, keeping the brand well ahead of rivals even as several EV-focused automakers post softer numbers. The bigger story sits underneath that topline figure: a generational handoff at the RAV4 is reshuffling which nameplates are actually carrying Toyota’s volume.

Key Points

• Toyota moved 215,556 vehicles in August, a total large enough to keep the brand atop the U.S. sales charts for the month.
• The RAV4, historically Toyota’s best-selling model, fell to 34,232 units sold — down 19.2% year-over-year — as dealers work through the outgoing generation’s dwindling inventory, according to sales-tracking site GoodCarBadCar.
• RAV4 sales are down 31.7% year-to-date through August, a decline GoodCarBadCar attributes directly to the changeover to the redesigned sixth-generation model.
• The Tacoma moved in the opposite direction, climbing 3.9% to 24,403 trucks sold in August and up 5.1% year-to-date, according to the same tracking data.

Model Breakdown: Where the Volume Shifted

The RAV4’s slide has been steep enough that the Camry has effectively taken over as Toyota’s top-selling nameplate in 2026, a shift first evident in the brand’s first-quarter results, when Camry outsold RAV4 by thousands of units in a single month. Camry has kept up that pace through the summer: year-to-date sales through July stood at 209,580 units, up nearly 15% from the same period a year earlier, according to GoodCarBadCar’s tracking data.

That combination — a hot-selling sedan, a resurgent midsize truck, and a longtime top-seller in the middle of a generational changeover — is unusual for Toyota, which typically leans on the RAV4 and Camry moving in the same direction rather than trading places. The RAV4 shortfall isn’t a demand problem so much as a supply one; the drop reflects the deliberate wind-down of the outgoing model as the redesigned sixth-generation RAV4 ramps up production, not softening interest in the nameplate itself.

Toyota’s August total also lands against a backdrop where several EV-centric brands have posted choppier monthly results, underscoring how much of the industry’s overall volume still runs through Toyota’s conventional and hybrid lineup rather than pure electrics. Electrified models — hybrids, plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles combined — made up nearly 45% of Toyota’s U.S. sales as recently as January, when the brand reported 79,561 electrified units out of 176,853 total sales, according to Reuters’ coverage of that month’s Toyota release — a mix that has kept the brand’s overall volume resilient even as individual nameplates like the RAV4 cycle through changeovers.

Context

With RAV4 inventory expected to normalize as sixth-generation production scales up later this year, Toyota’s monthly totals should pick up a second engine on top of the Camry and Tacoma gains already carrying the brand.