Toyota’s delayed retooling leaves RAV4 in short supply

North American output fell 30% through September as buyers wait months

Toyota’s decision last fall to keep building the 2025 RAV4 well into the fourth quarter, postponing factory retooling for the overhauled 2026 model, has produced a sharp supply shortage. North American production fell 30% through September, according to AutoForecast Solutions, while RAV4 sales in the U.S. declined 29% this year. Toyota’s U.S. and Canadian plants have operated at their limits since April, producing more than 30,000 RAV4s a month on average, a spokesman said.

The RAV4’s scale makes the shortage consequential for Toyota. The crossover is America’s best-selling vehicle that is not a pickup truck and the country’s most popular SUV, and the shortage threatens that position. Toyota sold 479,288 RAV4s in the U.S. last year, a record, but it will not hit that total this year. The 2026 vehicle is the sixth generation of a model introduced in the U.S. in 1996, with major design and component changes that typically occur every five or six years.

The early production gap was planned, but its scale left Toyota working to recover the deficit. Two plants in Ontario, Canada, underwent major retrofits for the overhauled model, and Toyota produced few RAV4s in January and February. Toyota’s Kentucky plant also started the new model late after the company decided not to phase out the RAV4 there as previously planned. Damon Rose, Toyota’s North America sales chief, said the automaker is still trying to make up the shortfall.

Toyota has responded by running its factories at capacity. A spokesman said the company has produced an average of more than 30,000 RAV4s a month across its U.S. and Canadian factories since April, at the limits of their capacity. “We’re now getting that steady flow that we had promised the dealers,” Rose said.

The resulting inventory gap is visible at U.S. dealerships. Toyota said dealers held about four days’ worth of RAV4s on their lots, while Motor Intelligence said the U.S. average stood at 51 days in September. Buyers must order months in advance, and nearly every RAV4 arriving at a dealership is already spoken for.

The scarcity has changed the behavior of dealers and buyers. Many dealerships do not have a single new vehicle for visitors to test-drive, and dealers said some customers are withdrawing deposits to take a second-choice vehicle they can obtain sooner. At Longo Toyota near Los Angeles, Toyota’s largest U.S. dealership, General Manager Doug Eroh said about 500 customers are waiting six to eight weeks for RAV4s. The wait list is down from its peak, Eroh said, but obtaining one remains difficult.

Dan Rubin put down a $1,000 deposit for the bestselling SUV earlier this month. His Vancouver dealership put him at No. 48 on its RAV4 wait list, meaning delivery would be months away. Rubin was driving a 2014 Mazda with about 130,000 miles that was in desperate need of repairs, but he withdrew his deposit and chose a Toyota Sienna minivan he could get sooner.

New Jersey medical assistant Caitlin Giles put down a deposit for a RAV4 in early May. Her three-week wait turned into three months. When the dealer called, Giles rushed home from work and woke her son. “You need to take me to the dealership right now,” she recalls telling him. “I need that car.”

Rose defended the decision to keep producing the outgoing model even as its replacement approached. The 2025 RAV4 remained “red hot,” he said. “It almost defied logic,” he said. “It has certainly put us in a little bit of a hole to dig out of,” Rose said.

The shortage comes as Toyota had been poised to overtake General Motors in U.S. sales, a milestone that may be harder to reach without plentiful supply of its top-selling vehicle. At the same time, persistently high gas prices have pushed Americans toward hybrids, and some shoppers are choosing RAV4 competitors such as the Honda CR-V Hybrid.

Toyota had bet heavily on hybrids while much of the U.S. industry attempted to pivot to electric vehicles, and that strategy had paid off for the automaker. This year marks the first time Toyota has offered the RAV4 only in hybrid and plug-in hybrid variants. Nearly all RAV4s achieve more than 40 combined miles per gallon. Rose said Toyota did not foresee the rise in U.S. gas prices, which he said broadened the RAV4’s appeal beyond hybrids’ coastal strongholds. “Tulsa, Oklahoma, wasn’t begging for hybrids. Now, the whole country sees the value,” he said.

Toyota’s difficulty reflects a broader problem with switching between vehicle generations. Automakers normally build inventories of outgoing models to bridge the retooling period, but Toyota’s vehicles sell at a faster rate, leaving the traditional strategy with less breathing room, said Tyson Jominy, a senior vice president at JD Power. In 2019, Toyota grew RAV4 sales in the U.S. even while transitioning to the vehicle’s fifth generation. A Toyota spokesman said the automaker had more 2018 RAV4 inventory on hand then, allowing more breathing room and an earlier transition.

“Normally, generational changeover issues aren’t this dramatic,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president at AutoForecast Solutions. Toyota’s plants remain at capacity as the automaker works to replace the lost production and serve demand for the 2026 model’s hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions.