“We’re definitely going to see a bump, and I think we’ve definitely brought a product that I think will warrant that higher volume,” Joe Moses, Toyota North America’s general manager of vehicle marketing and communications, trucks and SUVs, told Automotive News on the sidelines of an event here. “Quite frankly, there might even be a little bit more there, but we’ve set our targets on about triple where we are today.”
Two years after its 2000 debut, the Sequoia peaked at just over 70,000 U.S. sales. The last two years, beset by COVID-19 and the microchip shortage, were not kind to the aging SUV, with U.S. volume totaling 7,364 in 2020 and 8,070 in 2021. Last year, it was second from last in the large SUV segment, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center, ahead of only the Jeep Wagoneer, which returned to the market in late 2021 after a three-decade absence.
“Sequoia will be a great product for us,” said Doug Eroh, president and general manager of Longo Toyota in El Monte, Calif., the nation’s top-selling Toyota dealer. Eroh said the redesigned SUV should “fuel some of our year-over-year growth” in the second half of 2022, given how low current Sequoia sales are.
He said his dealership had already “received a few dozen new orders from our customers” since the Sequoia was revealed this week. “Our customers are excited about the product and especially the hybrid powertrain,” Eroh said. “The prospect of having a high-quality Toyota full-size SUV with an electrified powertrain is very appealing to our guests.”
