‘I don’t believe in an anti-China consumer sentiment’: Chinese Toyotas on the cards for Australia to bring the fight to emerging super-brands like BYD, GWM, MG, XPeng and Zeekr

Toyota has an ever-growing presence in China through a number of joint-venture companies and it isn’t ruling out bringing these cars to Australia.

Speaking with CarsGuide, Toyota Australia Vice President of sales and marketing Sean Hanley said the company has discussed the possibility of importing Chinese-made Toyotas to Australia, but no formal plan has been made yet.

“We’ve certainly spoken about it [but] we’ve not done any formal study to support that cause for Australia at this point,” said Hanley. “Having said that, it’s not something we would rule out in the future.

“If we’ve got manufacturing joint operations under the Toyota brand, under Toyota quality, we certainly would never rule it out and we’d be silly to.

Hanley added there are some limitations that currently hold Toyota Australia back from bringing these Chinese-made cars to Australia.

“[The] product offering isn’t right for our country,” said Hanley.

“That’s probably first and foremost but if you’re going to convert left- to right-[hand drive], you [have] got to have some compelling volume.

“You can’t just do it with 1000 cars, but you [have] got to have some serious volume.

Toyota Australia already sources the HiLux from Thailand, the Kluger and Tundra from the US, and the C-HR now comes from Türkiye.

The Japanese carmaker currently has two Chinese joint ventures, GAC Toyota and FAW Toyota.

While a number of the cars that these Toyota joint venture companies produce are just Chinese-made versions of cars sold in other markets, like the RAV4, Corolla and Camry, among others, there are now some unique vehicles for the Chinese market.

These include a range of electric vehicles that form part of Toyota’s ‘Beyond Zero’ (bZ) line-up. There is the bZ3 small sedan, bZ3X small SUV, bZ5 electric crossover and now the bZ7 large sedan.

The only EV Toyota currently sells in Australia is the bZ4X mid-size SUV, which is sourced from Japan in local-specification form. It’ll soon be complemented by the larger bZ4X Touring in early 2026.

“I don’t believe in an anti-China consumer sentiment,” said Hanley. “We’re a global market. We have been for a long time.

“The market and the consumer of Australia is far more mature well beyond that.

“We are a global world now that’s getting smaller by the month in terms of reach.

“As long as the countries in which you are sourcing product from are ethical, I don’t have an issue with it.”