Toyota still world’s top car maker

TOKYO, Japan – Toyota sold 10.23 million vehicles last year, it said on Wednesday, January 21, outpacing General Motors and Volkswagen to remain the world’s biggest automaker, but a shaky outlook for 2015 could see it lose the title to its German rival.

The record worldwide annual sales figure beat Volkswagen, which logged sales of 10.14 million vehicles, and US-based GM, which said it sold 9.92 million cars last year.

But Toyota also said sales would decline this year to an expected 10.15 million vehicles, as demand falls off in its home market.

That will likely mean Toyota will trail behind Volkswagen this year, as the German automaker rides momentum in emerging economies that could see it take the lead in global auto sales for the first time.

Toyota broke GM’s decades-long reign as the world’s top automaker in 2008 but lost the crown three years later as Japan’s earthquake-tsunami disaster hammered production and disrupted the supply chains of the country’s automakers.

However, in 2012 it once again overtook its Detroit rival, which sells the Chevrolet and luxury Cadillac brands. 

Toyota boosted its fiscal year through March profit forecast to 2.0 trillion yen ($16.97 billion), and said revenue would come in at 26.5 trillion yen, as it saw strong results in North America while a sharply weaker yen inflated its bottom line.

But it earlier warned over a downturn in some other key Asian markets including Indonesia and Thailand, which has been hammered by political unrest.

There are also growing fears about the entire industry’s prospects in China owing to concerns about the health of the world’s number-two economy.

Toyota’s upbeat announcement on Wednesday comes despite the firm struggling to recover its reputation for safety after the recall of millions of cars around the world for various problems, including an exploding air bag crisis at supplier Takata.

Fuel-cell cars

The maker of the Camry sedan and Prius hybrid has frozen the building of new plants for the three years until early 2016, and a Toyota executive at the Detroit auto show told Agence France-Presse last week that the giant automaker is emphasizing quality of sales rather than volume.

Among the moves, Toyota is pushing further into the fast-growing market for environmentally-friendly cars, especially in China where officials are struggling to contain an air pollution crisis.

Toyota said this month it had been swamped by domestic orders for its first mass market hydrogen fuel-cell car, with demand in the first month nearly four times higher than expected for the whole year.

The company received more than 1,500 orders for its “Mirai” sedan since its launch in mid-December. It had planned to sell 400 in Japan over 12 months.

The company also announced plans to develop components for hybrid vehicles with two Chinese automakers in an unprecedented technology-sharing deal aimed at increasing green car sales in the world’s biggest vehicle market.

The deal marked a shift away from Japanese carmakers’ traditional reluctance over such deals for fear of losing their competitive edge.

Previously, Toyota would make key components such as batteries and motors in high-cost Japan and then ship them to joint ventures overseas. But that drove up the price of models such as its Prius, which has seen sluggish sales in China.

Toyota shares slipped 1.15% to 7,571.0 yen in the afternoon, as the broader Tokyo market fell 0.89%. – Rappler.com