Toyota Rav4 Topples Tesla Model Y As World’s Best-Selling Vehicle

By Gary Gastelu |

Jul 3, 2025

The Toyota Rav4 was the best-selling car in 2024 according to a new report, but the win is almost too close to call.

JATO Dynamics analyst Felipe Munoz has released his latest tally of global sales and the Rav4, which is built in four countries and sold under several names racked up 1,187,000 deliveries.

That put it ahead of the Tesla Model Y, which came out on top in 2023, but trailed the Rav4 by 2,000 units last year with a total of 1,185,000.

That’s a tight margin that definitely leaves some room for error, but represents an 11% year-over-year gain for the Rav4 and a 3% drop for the Model Y.

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It’s also significantly different from a report published earlier this year by Focus2Move that recored 1.09 million sales for the Model Y, 1.08 million for the Toyota Corolla, and 1.02 million for the Rav4, but the methodologies are not identical and the JATO Dynamics report is one of the most highly regarded in the industry.

Corolla numbers can also be confusing as there are a variety of sedan, hatchback and SUV models that use the name, while the Rav4 and Model Y are only built in a single body style each. Munoz counted 859,000 sales for the Toyota Corolla Cross SUV to put it in third and 697,000 for the various car models.

The Honda CR-V slipped between them in fourth with 854,000 sales, while the Toyota Hilux pickup and Ford F-150 ranked sixth and seventh with 617,000 and 595,00 sales, respectively. The Toyota Camry (593,000), Tesla Model 3 (560,000) and BYD Qin (502,000) rounded out the top 10.

Toyota Rav4 sales have been steadily increasing in recent years. In the U.S. it beat the Camry to become the best-selling vehicle that’s not a pickup in 2017 and never looked back. Meanwhile, Model Y sales have been negatively affected over the past year by the double-whammy of resistance to Elon Musk’s foray into politics and a production dip while factories were retooled for an updated version. The transition is now complete and sales in the U.S. were up 14% from Q1 to Q2.