Just three years after Toyota last changed CEOs, the carmaker has done it again, with current CFO Kenta Kon to take the top spot from Koji Sato in April.
Sato’s three-year reign as Toyota CEO will go down as one of the shortest in recent history for the brand, having taken over from Akio Toyoda - grandson of the manufacturer’s founder - in 2023, following a stint as Lexus boss.
Kon is set to take the top job after working his way up the ranks since joining Toyota in 1991, however he only recently became CFO in July last year.
With Sato leaving the CEO role, he will assume the role of vice chairman - working under Toyoda - while also stepping into the newly created job of ‘chief industry officer’. In addition to this, he will be the chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.
“Within Toyota, improving the company’s earning power, which forms the foundation for continuing to make ever-better cars, and lowering the break-even volume are immediate priorities,” a Toyota press release read.
“Concrete actions on these issues are urgently required. To achieve this, it is necessary to lead reforms across the entire company, not through functional segmentation but by addressing the value chain as a whole.
“As Toyota’s CFO, Kon has been at the forefront of efforts to improve the earnings structure and has also gained cross-functional management experience at Woven by Toyota, Inc.”
The timing of Toyota’s decision to install a new CEO is surprising, as the carmaker just posted a new all-time annual vehicle sales record globally, delivering 11,322,575 automobiles worldwide in 2025.
This was its second record-breaking year since 2023, and deliveries haven’t dipped below 10 million since the COVID-19 impacted 2020.
Toyota also continues to grow the gap between it and the second-placed Volkswagen Group, which last year delivered 8.98 million vehicles, down 0.5 per cent and pushing it further away from regaining the sales crown it lost in 2019.
While Sato was Toyota’s CEO in 2024 when it was hit by two scandals - one involving the carmaker cheating engine tests and another dating back to crash tests of older models - it was Toyoda who took the blame for these incidents, something which temporarily led to his popularity within the brand slipping.
However, Toyota appears to be in a period of growth in recent months, announcing the spin-off of its Century and Gazoo Racing (GR) products as new sub-brands.
The carmaker’s shares are also at near record-high levels, while its prediction that EV sales would one day plateau appear to have come true.
