Toyota's sales surpassed Volkswagen's 1 million units in the first four months, and it is expected to become the sales champion for three consecutive years

According to foreign media reports, Toyota is on track to become the world's best-selling automaker for the third year in a row after it sold more than 1 million vehicles worldwide in the first four months of this year.

While both automakers' China operations have been affected to some extent by the outbreak, Toyota has better managed the damage.On May 30, Toyota announced its globalproduction and salesin April and the first four months of this year. In the first four months of this year, Toyota's global sales fell slightly by 5.8% year-on-year to 3,429,636 vehicles.According to data released by the Volkswagen Group, the group's global sales in the first four months of this year fell 26% to 2,414,800 vehicles.

In March, Toyota President Akio Toyoda told employees that the company was reviewing production plans with suppliers.That month, the company's globalproductionhit a record high for the same period.

In April, due to the impact of the epidemic, Toyota produced 692,259 vehicles, down 9.1% from the same period last year, and missed the company's previously planned production target of 750,000 vehicles.Still, Toyota managed to outsell the Volkswagen Group (516,500) with 835,657 sales in April.

Image credit: Toyota

Sales in China, its biggest market, have been poor so far this year, where Volkswagen Group sales fell 30 percent to 896,700 vehicles at the end of April.In addition, Volkswagen has a much larger business scale in Western Europe than Toyota, so it is also more affected by the escalating situation in Russia and Ukraine.In the first four months of this year, the Volkswagen Group's sales in Western Europe fell 18.6% year-on-year to 825,000 vehicles.