Corrected 28 September 2026: JADA's registered-vehicle count for July is 276,679 and Zenkeijikyo's revised kei count is 140,494, so July's combined total is 417,173, ten units above the figure first published here.
Japan sold 417,173 new vehicles in July 2026, up 6.8% on July 2025. The figure combines 276,679 registered vehicles with 140,494 kei minivehicles, the latter taken from the official Zenkeijikyo monthly print (Zenkeijikyo, July 2026; just-auto corroboration).
The kei class is a third of the market
Kei sales were up 1.6% on July 2025 and down 3.3% on June, holding roughly 34% of the whole Japanese market. Suzuki took 33.1% of the kei month, Daihatsu 28.9% and Honda 19.7%. No other major market has a regulatory vehicle class this large, which is why Japan's totals only make sense when the two series are read together.
Passenger cars up 7.7%
By body type, passenger vehicles rose 7.7% to 351,462 units, trucks rose 1.4% to 64,481 and buses came in at 1,220. Toyota held roughly a third of the market on its own. The month's curiosity was the arrival of the BYD Racco, the first kei car a foreign manufacturer has designed specifically for Japan, at a modest 125 units of pre-launch demonstrator sales.
Seven months: 2,804,363 vehicles
Year to date Japan has sold 2,804,363 vehicles, up 2.5%, splitting into 1,807,092 registered vehicles and 997,271 kei. Steady growth in the third year after the certification scandals that suppressed 2024 output is the base case now. Battery-electric share remains the lowest of any market Autonergy tracks, in low single digits, which makes Japan the useful counterexample in any global EV chart. Open the live Japan dashboard for the monthly series and the brand table.