Toyota, Honda and Nissan All Crashed in China in July, Nissan Down 58.7%

Japan's big three released their July China sales figures, and every one of them fell hard, Kyodo News reported. Toyota moved 114,700 vehicles, down 24.3% year on year. Nissan collapsed 58.7% to just 23,677, its fourth consecutive monthly decline.

Honda dropped 44.1% to 25,052, extending its losing streak to 30 straight months. Cumulative figures for the first seven months show Toyota down 18% at 809,400, Nissan down 22% at 261,100, and Honda down 36% at 238,700.

The year-ago comparison stings the most. In July 2025, Nissan surged 21.8% to 57,359 units on the strength of its newly launched N7 electric sedan. Twelve months later, with the N7's momentum faded and no follow-up hit, sales fell by nearly sixty percent.

Honda's situation is grimmer still, having booked its first annual net loss in roughly 70 years as a listed company, with plant closures already underway in Guangzhou and Wuhan. Its 25,000 July sales are less than a single popular BYD model manages in a month.

The backdrop is a collapsing gasoline base. China's EV penetration crossed 60% for the first time in July, domestic brands took 77.4% of the passenger car market, and only one joint-venture gasoline model, the Toyota Corolla Cross, made the retail top ten, in tenth place.

Toyota is the most resilient of the three thanks to its hybrid and ICE mainstays like the Camry and RAV4, but a 24.3% drop shows the base itself is leaking.

A fair caveat, this is not purely a Chinese-brands-winning story. Overall domestic passenger car sales fell roughly 20% over the first seven months, and Middle East-driven fuel prices have further suppressed gasoline demand, so Japanese brands face a double squeeze of a shrinking market and lost share within it.

Honda has handed EV development control to its joint ventures and brought in Huawei and Momenta, while Nissan's N7 proved local teams can produce a hit.

The question was never whether they can build one, but whether they have a second act. A 30-month decline curve suggests the window for a Japanese comeback in China is narrower than anyone in Tokyo wants to admit.