Toyota set to overtake GM as top automaker next year
10-26-05, 07:45 AM
#1
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Toyota set to overtake GM as top automaker next year
Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 26 October 2005 1117 hrs
TOKYO : The Toyota Motor Corp group is set to overtake US rival General Motors next year as the world's number one automaker in terms of output, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reports.
Toyota's global production is expected to reach 9.2 million units in 2006 including its group automakers Daihatsu and Hino Motors, the business daily said in an unsourced article.
GM's global production next year is unlikely to exceed its 2005 projection of 9.12 million vehicles given factory closures prompted by a sales slump, it noted.
The core Toyota company is to increase its global ouptut 12 percent from its 2005 projection to 8.3 million cars next year, while Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors are together expected to produce over 900,000 units.
Toyota's overseas output is also set to exceed production in Japan for the first time next year, rising above 4.0 million units on the back of strong sales in the United States and emerging economies.
In North America, which accounts for about 30 percent of Toyota's global sales, the group is set to start producing 200,000 pickup trucks a year at a new factory in Texas, the report said.
In China, its manufacturing capacity is seen rising by 100,000 to around 340,000 units a year with the launch of a plant in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
A separate report said Tuesday that China could rival the United States as Toyota's largest overseas production base within five years as it aims to double its mainland market share by 2010.
Toyota expects to produce 500,000 cars a year in China for annual sales worth 80 billion yuan (1.2 billion dollars) by 2010 with partner China First Auto Works (FAW), Toyota vice-president Inaba Yoshimi was quoted as saying by the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
Japanese automakers have been so successful in North America, particularly with their hybrid designs, that some have set prices higher to give a chance to US automakers and so preempt a political backlash.
Last week GM posted a loss of 1.6 billion dollars for the third quarter on revenue of 47.2 billion dollars while Ford reported a third-quarter net loss of 284 million dollars.
Toyota meanwhile is expected to report its first drop in half-year net profit for four years on November 4 as rising investment in production facilities offsets strong sales, according to Japanese media reports.
Toyota saw net profit dip 6.9 percent year-on-year in the June quarter to 266.9 billion yen (2.4 billion dollars) although sales jumped 10.5 percent to a record 4.98 trillion yen (43 billion dollars). - AFP
source : channelnewsasia
Posted: 26 October 2005 1117 hrs
TOKYO : The Toyota Motor Corp group is set to overtake US rival General Motors next year as the world's number one automaker in terms of output, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reports.
Toyota's global production is expected to reach 9.2 million units in 2006 including its group automakers Daihatsu and Hino Motors, the business daily said in an unsourced article.
GM's global production next year is unlikely to exceed its 2005 projection of 9.12 million vehicles given factory closures prompted by a sales slump, it noted.
The core Toyota company is to increase its global ouptut 12 percent from its 2005 projection to 8.3 million cars next year, while Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors are together expected to produce over 900,000 units.
Toyota's overseas output is also set to exceed production in Japan for the first time next year, rising above 4.0 million units on the back of strong sales in the United States and emerging economies.
In North America, which accounts for about 30 percent of Toyota's global sales, the group is set to start producing 200,000 pickup trucks a year at a new factory in Texas, the report said.
In China, its manufacturing capacity is seen rising by 100,000 to around 340,000 units a year with the launch of a plant in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
A separate report said Tuesday that China could rival the United States as Toyota's largest overseas production base within five years as it aims to double its mainland market share by 2010.
Toyota expects to produce 500,000 cars a year in China for annual sales worth 80 billion yuan (1.2 billion dollars) by 2010 with partner China First Auto Works (FAW), Toyota vice-president Inaba Yoshimi was quoted as saying by the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
Japanese automakers have been so successful in North America, particularly with their hybrid designs, that some have set prices higher to give a chance to US automakers and so preempt a political backlash.
Last week GM posted a loss of 1.6 billion dollars for the third quarter on revenue of 47.2 billion dollars while Ford reported a third-quarter net loss of 284 million dollars.
Toyota meanwhile is expected to report its first drop in half-year net profit for four years on November 4 as rising investment in production facilities offsets strong sales, according to Japanese media reports.
Toyota saw net profit dip 6.9 percent year-on-year in the June quarter to 266.9 billion yen (2.4 billion dollars) although sales jumped 10.5 percent to a record 4.98 trillion yen (43 billion dollars). - AFP
source : channelnewsasia
10-26-05, 07:56 AM
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Go Toyota! Go Lexus! Go Scion!
Last edited by Trexus; 11-01-05 at 10:24 PM.
10-26-05, 08:21 AM
#3
Lexus Fanatic
I certainly wish Toyota success here...it definitely builds some of the best automotive products.....but if it DOES become #1 soon, I hope it doesn't take the route that GM did back in the 1960's and 1970's when they were #1and practically owned the market. They became arrogant, unresponsible, unresponsive to consumer wishes, and too beholden to bean counters and K-Mart level marketers...and paid the price. GM also screwed up unique companies like Saturn and Saab. Bob Lutz has helped the corporation greatly, but it still has a long way to go.
10-26-05, 08:24 AM
#4
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Originally Posted by mmarshall
I certainly wish Toyota success here...it definitely builds some of the best automotive products.....but if it DOES become #1 soon, I hope it doesn't take the route that GM did back in the 1960's and 1970's when they were #1and practically owned the market. They became arrogant, unresponsible, unresponsive to consumer wishes, and too beholden to bean counters and K-Mart level marketers...and paid the price. GM also screwed up unique companies like Saturn and Saab. Bob Lutz has helped the corporation greatly, but it still has a long way to go.
Bigger isn't always better.
10-26-05, 10:57 AM
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Originally Posted by mmarshall
I certainly wish Toyota success here...it definitely builds some of the best automotive products.....but if it DOES become #1 soon, I hope it doesn't take the route that GM did back in the 1960's and 1970's when they were #1and practically owned the market. They became arrogant, unresponsible, unresponsive to consumer wishes, and too beholden to bean counters and K-Mart level marketers...and paid the price. GM also screwed up unique companies like Saturn and Saab. Bob Lutz has helped the corporation greatly, but it still has a long way to go.
10-26-05, 11:09 AM
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Originally Posted by mmarshall
I certainly wish Toyota success here...it definitely builds some of the best automotive products.....but if it DOES become #1 soon, I hope it doesn't take the route that GM did back in the 1960's and 1970's when they were #1and practically owned the market. They became arrogant, unresponsible, unresponsive to consumer wishes, and too beholden to bean counters and K-Mart level marketers...and paid the price. GM also screwed up unique companies like Saturn and Saab. Bob Lutz has helped the corporation greatly, but it still has a long way to go.
10-26-05, 12:24 PM
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Originally Posted by Bercasio
Well let's remember that Toyota at one point wanted to somewhat merge with GM in the early 80s' but that fell through b/c of GM's ignorance to the automotive game. SinceToyota has dominated Zen Patience, they are now setting the perfect example of how not to "S#!T the bed" when rollin' the dice!...... Congrats to Toyota!
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11-02-05, 05:37 PM
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I remember less than a year ago a thread on here discussing the future positions of GM and Toyota. We were predicting Toyota someday overtaking GM's #1 spot. Many were saying, "not anytime soon!" Some said, "no way, that will never happen!". Generally, we were guessing about a decade.
It turns out to be less than 2 years!
It turns out to be less than 2 years!
11-03-05, 07:58 PM
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Go Toyota! Toyota all the way!
Last edited by Trexus; 11-28-05 at 08:38 AM.
11-28-05, 06:41 AM
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Relentless
Toyota is poised to overtake GM, but here's the scariest part: Now it's stepping on the gas.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
TOKYO -- Like a great tanker holding its course through stormy seas, Toyota Motor Corp. is gaining share in the world's most competitive markets and steaming ahead with new technology. Already the world's richest automaker, it is on track to become the largest.
With General Motors Corp. losing ground in its home market, Toyota's path to the top seems unobstructed.
Yet Toyota's top managers aren't satisfied. Instead of pausing to savor their achievements, they are ramping up capacity, stepping up the pace for 265,000 employees worldwide and inducing a level of pressure that companies usually face in times of crisis.
At a briefing last month in Tokyo, Toyota executives appeared uneasy discussing the company's epic transformation from challenger venturing cautiously into new markets to the new champion in everyone's sights.
After outlining the company's strengths and weaknesses, new Chief Executive Katsuaki Watanabe glumly concluded, "There's still room for improvement." Sitting to his right in a hotel suite, Toyota's head of overseas operations, Tokuichi Uranishi, nodded in assent.
Most rivals would happily swap their problems for Toyota's. Its high profitability slightly lags that of Nissan Motor Corp., low-cost Asian rivals are coming on the scene, and recalls are rising along with sales.
But the most daunting challenge may be the consequences of the automaker's success - the arrogance and complacency that can set in at even the finest companies.
When Toyota announced three years ago that it was gunning for 15 percent of the world market, the bold declaration was widely perceived as a shot across GM's bow. The U.S. automaker has a 14.4 percent global market share this year.
But Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founder and a senior company executive, says that objective has been misunderstood. "That's not a target," Toyoda told The Detroit News. "That's a banner to rally people to make greater effort."
To report this series, The Detroit News traveled to Tokyo, San Antonio and Princeton, Ind., and interviewed senior Toyota executives in Japan and North America.
From their headquarters in Toyota City, a drab town in Japan's rural Nagoya region, the automaker has drafted ambitious plans for all major regions. This year and next, Toyota is increasing production capacity by nearly 1 million vehicles to keep pace with growing demand for its solid and reliable cars and trucks.
In Russia, China and elsewhere, it is hiring thousands of workers and erecting plants with a goal of doubling overseas output in coming years. It is now building a full-size pickup plant in Texas.
Toyota is also rethinking each stage of the car-making process, from design to manufacturing, to cut costs and shorten the time it takes to bring new vehicles to market. That's a crucial competitive advantage in the auto industry.
From the time the design is approved to the start of production, "we're shortening the development process to 12 months, or even less," from 20 months, Watanabe said.
Watching Toyota, rivals are perplexed by a curious combination of modesty, wariness and aggressiveness displayed by its executives.
"They'll give you this, 'We're farmers from Nagoya' routine, but they're extremely sophisticated and good at what they do," said Bruce Coventry, president of the Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance, a venture of DaimlerChrysler, Hyundai Motor and Mitsubishi Motors.
Firm risks overheating
Even for a company with good quality control, such rapid growth risks compromising the rigorous methods that lie at the root of Toyota's success and are now industry standards. Recently, Nissan stumbled when it built too many new models, too fast at a new plant in Canton, Miss.
"They're generally fairly cautious" at Toyota, said Tokyo-based auto analyst Andrew Phillips at Nikko Citigroup. "But with the increases in production they're talking about, there's certainly a risk that there could be problems."
Already, Toyota's recalls are on the rise, tracking its sales growth, while rivals have narrowed the gap in vehicle quality and productivity.
Toyota suffered a big embarrassment last month when it recalled its gas-electric Prius hybrid to fix a software defect that was causing some engines to stall. That month, it recalled 1.3 million small cars in five countries, its largest recall ever.
"We're not happy about some of these recalls," said Gary Convis, president of Toyota's Georgetown, Ky., plant. "We're looking hard to make sure that they don't proportionately increase."
As Toyota expands rapidly, it is also grappling with a shortage of skilled managers and engineers. When it decided in June to build its seventh North American assembly plant in Woodstock, Ontario, officials said one reason they chose that site was because the new factory could be overseen by the team running its nearby Cambridge plant.
Last month, the normally acquisition-shy Toyota bought nearly half of GM's 20 percent stake in Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., in part to bolster its ranks of researchers and engineers.
Now, some Toyota executives in fast-growing regions are coaxing former managers out of retirement. Less than a year after Ed Ohlin retired, the 21-year company veteran and former head of its Mexican sales operations is back on the payroll, helping his former boss Yoshimi Inaba build a sales network in China.
"He was looking for someone who understood the Toyota culture and had brought it to another country. I'd done that," said Ohlin, who now works in Beijing.
Watanabe, a slim, bespectacled manager who previously ran Toyota's vast purchasing operations, seems keenly aware of the risks. "In terms of the time scale, you can say growth might be too rapid," he said.
"But we're still at the stage where we can manage rapid growth," he added, listing safeguards the management is putting in place to ensure that Toyota's expansion doesn't hurt its reputation for quality.
It is adopting new training methods to rapidly teach thousands of new workers and managers the painstaking Toyota Way in more than a dozen languages.
In past years, experts in the Toyota Way had time to nurture new hires. But now they get intensive training at vast centers. Two years ago, Toyota opened a mock assembly plant, the Global Production Center, at the Motomachi factory in Toyota City to train about 2,000 employees a year.
Early this month, experts from Motomachi certified the second such training center, a 99,000-square-foot facility on the site of its Kentucky plant. It will build a third in Europe.
"The idea was to gather best practices from the plants and institutionalize that," said Convis. "Globally, we're doing the same thing, whether you're in a plant in China, Russia or South America."
With so much of Toyota's expansion taking place abroad, "whether we have enough people absorbing the Toyota Way is something we're watching very carefully," said Watanabe.
At the heart of the renowned Toyota Production System are two principles: "kaizen," or continuous improvement, and respect for people. U.S. automakers first saw the system in action after Toyota formed a manufacturing venture in California with GM in 1984. This year, it opened a plant jointly owned with France's PSA Peugeot Citroen in the Czech Republic.
Unusual among automakers, "they don't hide a lot," Coventry said. "It's like going to the Super Bowl and having the opposite side throw their playbook on the table. It's as if they feel they can still beat you on the field."
A dark horse
In a reflection of Toyota's team-oriented approach, its executive pay is paltry by U.S. standards. Analyst Ron Tadross at Banc of America Securities estimates the total annual compensation of Toyota's CEO at under $1 million - about as much as a vice president at GM or Ford Motor Co. makes in a good year.
Earlier this year, when former chief executive Fujio Cho prepared to move up to the position of vice chairman, Watanabe wasn't the most prominent candidate to replace him. He lacked overseas experience. But as purchasing director, Watanabe held a key post at Toyota, which has close ties with its suppliers and owns stakes in many.
His appointment signaled that Toyota was intent on tightening cost controls and boosting profits. They have leveled at around $11 billion a year for the past two fiscal years, as the automaker has spent heavily on new factories, vehicles and fuel-saving technologies.
But those investments are paying off. While GM and Ford are losing sales at home and restructuring, Toyota keeps gaining even though it offers smaller discounts.
At U.S. dealerships, domestic vehicles languish three times longer on lots than Toyota models, according to the Power Information Network, a division of J.D. Power and Associates. Customers wait for months to buy the hybrids.
Last month, as Detroit's automakers reeled from the aftermath of their summer employee discount boom, Toyota's market share climbed to 15.1 percent - just a couple of percentage points behind Ford and DaimlerChrysler - even though Toyota's styling is still blander than some of the new designs coming out of Detroit, such as the Chrysler 300C sedan, the new Ford Mustang and the Pontiac Solstice.
"With the Camry, the passion point tends to be quality and reliability," said Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore. "You don't need a dynamic design to get people into the showroom."
In recent years, Toyota's sales have grown even faster in Europe and Asia, boosting its share of the global market to 12 percent last year, from 9.5 percent five years ago.
In sharp contrast to most of its rivals - which rollercoaster through boom and bust cycles - Toyota hasn't recorded an annual loss in more than 50 years. Ever fearful that things could go wrong, it has $28 billion set aside for a rainy day.
And Toyota executives always seem on the lookout for storm clouds. "My experience has been that when a company's doing poorly, it's never as bad as it seems, and when a company's doing well, it's never as good as people write," said Jim Press, president of Toyota Motor Sales USA.
While the company is viewed as Public Enemy No. 1 in much of Detroit, U.S. suppliers are cozying up.
Executives from the big American component manufacturers were on hand July 13 when Toyota's Hino Motors truck-making subsidiary opened a sales office in Farmington Hills. Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who is lobbying for a Toyota plant for the state, donned a short kimono-style jacket and joined Japanese executives for the sake-toasting ritual.
Toyota has not ruled out Michigan as it studies ways to increase output of engines and transmissions in North America, either by expanding a plant or building one. It likes to build at least 60 percent of the vehicles it sells in any region locally. As sales increase, it adds assembly plants and boosts capacity for engine and transmission output.
"It's a constant trajectory upward," said Michael Robinet, vice president of global forecasting at CSM Worldwide. "It looks like they're growing aggressively, but it's very methodical.
"They're ticking the boxes as they go along."
These days, they're ticking off more of them - and faster.
source : detnews
Sunday, November 27, 2005
TOKYO -- Like a great tanker holding its course through stormy seas, Toyota Motor Corp. is gaining share in the world's most competitive markets and steaming ahead with new technology. Already the world's richest automaker, it is on track to become the largest.
With General Motors Corp. losing ground in its home market, Toyota's path to the top seems unobstructed.
Yet Toyota's top managers aren't satisfied. Instead of pausing to savor their achievements, they are ramping up capacity, stepping up the pace for 265,000 employees worldwide and inducing a level of pressure that companies usually face in times of crisis.
At a briefing last month in Tokyo, Toyota executives appeared uneasy discussing the company's epic transformation from challenger venturing cautiously into new markets to the new champion in everyone's sights.
After outlining the company's strengths and weaknesses, new Chief Executive Katsuaki Watanabe glumly concluded, "There's still room for improvement." Sitting to his right in a hotel suite, Toyota's head of overseas operations, Tokuichi Uranishi, nodded in assent.
Most rivals would happily swap their problems for Toyota's. Its high profitability slightly lags that of Nissan Motor Corp., low-cost Asian rivals are coming on the scene, and recalls are rising along with sales.
But the most daunting challenge may be the consequences of the automaker's success - the arrogance and complacency that can set in at even the finest companies.
When Toyota announced three years ago that it was gunning for 15 percent of the world market, the bold declaration was widely perceived as a shot across GM's bow. The U.S. automaker has a 14.4 percent global market share this year.
But Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founder and a senior company executive, says that objective has been misunderstood. "That's not a target," Toyoda told The Detroit News. "That's a banner to rally people to make greater effort."
To report this series, The Detroit News traveled to Tokyo, San Antonio and Princeton, Ind., and interviewed senior Toyota executives in Japan and North America.
From their headquarters in Toyota City, a drab town in Japan's rural Nagoya region, the automaker has drafted ambitious plans for all major regions. This year and next, Toyota is increasing production capacity by nearly 1 million vehicles to keep pace with growing demand for its solid and reliable cars and trucks.
In Russia, China and elsewhere, it is hiring thousands of workers and erecting plants with a goal of doubling overseas output in coming years. It is now building a full-size pickup plant in Texas.
Toyota is also rethinking each stage of the car-making process, from design to manufacturing, to cut costs and shorten the time it takes to bring new vehicles to market. That's a crucial competitive advantage in the auto industry.
From the time the design is approved to the start of production, "we're shortening the development process to 12 months, or even less," from 20 months, Watanabe said.
Watching Toyota, rivals are perplexed by a curious combination of modesty, wariness and aggressiveness displayed by its executives.
"They'll give you this, 'We're farmers from Nagoya' routine, but they're extremely sophisticated and good at what they do," said Bruce Coventry, president of the Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance, a venture of DaimlerChrysler, Hyundai Motor and Mitsubishi Motors.
Firm risks overheating
Even for a company with good quality control, such rapid growth risks compromising the rigorous methods that lie at the root of Toyota's success and are now industry standards. Recently, Nissan stumbled when it built too many new models, too fast at a new plant in Canton, Miss.
"They're generally fairly cautious" at Toyota, said Tokyo-based auto analyst Andrew Phillips at Nikko Citigroup. "But with the increases in production they're talking about, there's certainly a risk that there could be problems."
Already, Toyota's recalls are on the rise, tracking its sales growth, while rivals have narrowed the gap in vehicle quality and productivity.
Toyota suffered a big embarrassment last month when it recalled its gas-electric Prius hybrid to fix a software defect that was causing some engines to stall. That month, it recalled 1.3 million small cars in five countries, its largest recall ever.
"We're not happy about some of these recalls," said Gary Convis, president of Toyota's Georgetown, Ky., plant. "We're looking hard to make sure that they don't proportionately increase."
As Toyota expands rapidly, it is also grappling with a shortage of skilled managers and engineers. When it decided in June to build its seventh North American assembly plant in Woodstock, Ontario, officials said one reason they chose that site was because the new factory could be overseen by the team running its nearby Cambridge plant.
Last month, the normally acquisition-shy Toyota bought nearly half of GM's 20 percent stake in Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., in part to bolster its ranks of researchers and engineers.
Now, some Toyota executives in fast-growing regions are coaxing former managers out of retirement. Less than a year after Ed Ohlin retired, the 21-year company veteran and former head of its Mexican sales operations is back on the payroll, helping his former boss Yoshimi Inaba build a sales network in China.
"He was looking for someone who understood the Toyota culture and had brought it to another country. I'd done that," said Ohlin, who now works in Beijing.
Watanabe, a slim, bespectacled manager who previously ran Toyota's vast purchasing operations, seems keenly aware of the risks. "In terms of the time scale, you can say growth might be too rapid," he said.
"But we're still at the stage where we can manage rapid growth," he added, listing safeguards the management is putting in place to ensure that Toyota's expansion doesn't hurt its reputation for quality.
It is adopting new training methods to rapidly teach thousands of new workers and managers the painstaking Toyota Way in more than a dozen languages.
In past years, experts in the Toyota Way had time to nurture new hires. But now they get intensive training at vast centers. Two years ago, Toyota opened a mock assembly plant, the Global Production Center, at the Motomachi factory in Toyota City to train about 2,000 employees a year.
Early this month, experts from Motomachi certified the second such training center, a 99,000-square-foot facility on the site of its Kentucky plant. It will build a third in Europe.
"The idea was to gather best practices from the plants and institutionalize that," said Convis. "Globally, we're doing the same thing, whether you're in a plant in China, Russia or South America."
With so much of Toyota's expansion taking place abroad, "whether we have enough people absorbing the Toyota Way is something we're watching very carefully," said Watanabe.
At the heart of the renowned Toyota Production System are two principles: "kaizen," or continuous improvement, and respect for people. U.S. automakers first saw the system in action after Toyota formed a manufacturing venture in California with GM in 1984. This year, it opened a plant jointly owned with France's PSA Peugeot Citroen in the Czech Republic.
Unusual among automakers, "they don't hide a lot," Coventry said. "It's like going to the Super Bowl and having the opposite side throw their playbook on the table. It's as if they feel they can still beat you on the field."
A dark horse
In a reflection of Toyota's team-oriented approach, its executive pay is paltry by U.S. standards. Analyst Ron Tadross at Banc of America Securities estimates the total annual compensation of Toyota's CEO at under $1 million - about as much as a vice president at GM or Ford Motor Co. makes in a good year.
Earlier this year, when former chief executive Fujio Cho prepared to move up to the position of vice chairman, Watanabe wasn't the most prominent candidate to replace him. He lacked overseas experience. But as purchasing director, Watanabe held a key post at Toyota, which has close ties with its suppliers and owns stakes in many.
His appointment signaled that Toyota was intent on tightening cost controls and boosting profits. They have leveled at around $11 billion a year for the past two fiscal years, as the automaker has spent heavily on new factories, vehicles and fuel-saving technologies.
But those investments are paying off. While GM and Ford are losing sales at home and restructuring, Toyota keeps gaining even though it offers smaller discounts.
At U.S. dealerships, domestic vehicles languish three times longer on lots than Toyota models, according to the Power Information Network, a division of J.D. Power and Associates. Customers wait for months to buy the hybrids.
Last month, as Detroit's automakers reeled from the aftermath of their summer employee discount boom, Toyota's market share climbed to 15.1 percent - just a couple of percentage points behind Ford and DaimlerChrysler - even though Toyota's styling is still blander than some of the new designs coming out of Detroit, such as the Chrysler 300C sedan, the new Ford Mustang and the Pontiac Solstice.
"With the Camry, the passion point tends to be quality and reliability," said Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore. "You don't need a dynamic design to get people into the showroom."
In recent years, Toyota's sales have grown even faster in Europe and Asia, boosting its share of the global market to 12 percent last year, from 9.5 percent five years ago.
In sharp contrast to most of its rivals - which rollercoaster through boom and bust cycles - Toyota hasn't recorded an annual loss in more than 50 years. Ever fearful that things could go wrong, it has $28 billion set aside for a rainy day.
And Toyota executives always seem on the lookout for storm clouds. "My experience has been that when a company's doing poorly, it's never as bad as it seems, and when a company's doing well, it's never as good as people write," said Jim Press, president of Toyota Motor Sales USA.
While the company is viewed as Public Enemy No. 1 in much of Detroit, U.S. suppliers are cozying up.
Executives from the big American component manufacturers were on hand July 13 when Toyota's Hino Motors truck-making subsidiary opened a sales office in Farmington Hills. Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who is lobbying for a Toyota plant for the state, donned a short kimono-style jacket and joined Japanese executives for the sake-toasting ritual.
Toyota has not ruled out Michigan as it studies ways to increase output of engines and transmissions in North America, either by expanding a plant or building one. It likes to build at least 60 percent of the vehicles it sells in any region locally. As sales increase, it adds assembly plants and boosts capacity for engine and transmission output.
"It's a constant trajectory upward," said Michael Robinet, vice president of global forecasting at CSM Worldwide. "It looks like they're growing aggressively, but it's very methodical.
"They're ticking the boxes as they go along."
These days, they're ticking off more of them - and faster.
Toyota: By the numbers
$177B
Value of combined shares -- more than 13 times GM's
market value
5
Brands (Toyota, Lexus, Scion,
Daihatsu, Hino)
$10.9B
Profit in fiscal 2005
7.23M
Vehicles produced worldwide in
fiscal 2005
$17B
Fiscal 2006
spending on capital expenditures
and R&D
$28B
Cash, marketable securities on hand
Sources: Toyota, Detroit News research
$177B
Value of combined shares -- more than 13 times GM's
market value
5
Brands (Toyota, Lexus, Scion,
Daihatsu, Hino)
$10.9B
Profit in fiscal 2005
7.23M
Vehicles produced worldwide in
fiscal 2005
$17B
Fiscal 2006
spending on capital expenditures
and R&D
$28B
Cash, marketable securities on hand
Sources: Toyota, Detroit News research
source : detnews
11-28-05, 07:49 AM
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Originally Posted by xioix
it was with ford
Last edited by Bercasio; 11-28-05 at 08:04 AM.
12-20-05, 05:28 AM
#14
Latest News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051220/...ltBHNlYwM3MTY-
Toyota Plans to Produce 9M Vehicles in '06
By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 34 minutes ago
NAGOYA, Japan - Toyota said Tuesday it plans to produce 9.06 million vehicles in 2006, threatening to overtake struggling U.S. rival General Motors as the world's biggest automaker.
Although General Motors does not give full-year production targets, Toyota's forecast will put it neck-and-neck with GM and possibly allow Toyota to take the lead. GM produced 6.7 million vehicles during the first three quarters of this year and expects to produce about 9 million vehicles this year.
Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's top automaker, has been growing at a time when General Motors Corp. has been stumbling, losing $1.6 billion in the third quarter and seeing its market share in North America chipped away by Asian automakers, including Toyota.
Toyota's production target, announced by President Katsuaki Watanabe at a news conference in Nagoya, central Japan, marks a 10 percent increase from the 8.25 million vehicles Toyota expects to produce this year.
Like Toyota, other Japanese automakers, including Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co., are also in good health.
Honda said Tuesday in Tokyo that it projects global sales in 2005 will have risen 5 percent from a year earlier to a record 3.35 million vehicles, while vehicle production worldwide will have gone up 7.2 percent from last year to 3.41 million cars.
Koji Endo, auto analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston in Tokyo, believes that Toyota is strong because it has ample money to invest in facilities and research that in turn allows it to produce cars that appeal to the market and cut costs, thereby producing more profits.
With Toyota booming on a "positive cycle" of healthy sales leading to more sales, it's definitely on track to overtake GM in annual vehicle production, he said.
"It's bound to happen either next year or the year after," Endo said. "But perhaps there isn't much point to the question. It doesn't make much sense to be comparing vehicle production numbers between the world's most profitable automaker and one that's on the verge of collapse."
Toyota said it expects to sell 8.85 million vehicles worldwide next year, up 9 percent from 8.09 million estimated for this year.
When not including its subsidiary automakers Hino and Daihatsu, Toyota plans to produce 8.11 million vehicles next year, up 10 percent from 7.37 million vehicles in 2005.
Watanabe played down Toyota's possible imminent No. 1 status in the world auto industry.
"We try to prepare our production and sales to respond to customer needs in every region," he told reporters. "I am not thinking much about whether we will become No. 1 in the world as a result of that."
Watanabe also brushed off fears about a possible U.S. political backlash of protective sentiment that intensified in the 1980s, noting that Toyota has boosted production and parts purchasing in the United States, and become a good corporate citizen.
"I do not anticipate trade friction to grow into a major problem at this time," he said.
Peter Morici, University of Maryland economist and auto industry expert, believes that GM, Ford Motor Co. and the
United Auto Workers, the U.S. labor union, do not enjoy much public sympathy, compared to the 1980s.
"I do not believe the U.S. public will support protection for GM. If the government does it, it will have to be veiled," he said.
Detroit-based General Motors has announced drastic cost cuts, including trimming 30,000 jobs, or 27 percent of its North American manufacturing jobs, and the closure of 12 facilities by 2008.
GM's U.S. market share fell to 26.2 percent in the first 10 months of this year compared with 33 percent a decade ago, the result of increasing competition from Asian rivals. Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered GM's debt to "junk" status earlier this year.
GM isn't the only U.S. automaker cutting costs.
Ford Motor Co., which reported a third-quarter loss of $284 million, has said it plans to eliminate about 4,000 white-collar jobs in North America early next year as part of a restructuring plan.
Ford Chairman and CEO Bill Ford has said he plans to announce U.S. plant closings and layoffs in January.
Watanabe said Toyota has succeeded because it followed its dream of being the first in the world to produce the best cars at the lowest costs. And Toyota isn't about to sit on its laurels, he said.
"It's critical we maintain our spirit of perpetual challenge," Watanabe said.
Toyota Plans to Produce 9M Vehicles in '06
By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 34 minutes ago
NAGOYA, Japan - Toyota said Tuesday it plans to produce 9.06 million vehicles in 2006, threatening to overtake struggling U.S. rival General Motors as the world's biggest automaker.
Although General Motors does not give full-year production targets, Toyota's forecast will put it neck-and-neck with GM and possibly allow Toyota to take the lead. GM produced 6.7 million vehicles during the first three quarters of this year and expects to produce about 9 million vehicles this year.
Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's top automaker, has been growing at a time when General Motors Corp. has been stumbling, losing $1.6 billion in the third quarter and seeing its market share in North America chipped away by Asian automakers, including Toyota.
Toyota's production target, announced by President Katsuaki Watanabe at a news conference in Nagoya, central Japan, marks a 10 percent increase from the 8.25 million vehicles Toyota expects to produce this year.
Like Toyota, other Japanese automakers, including Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co., are also in good health.
Honda said Tuesday in Tokyo that it projects global sales in 2005 will have risen 5 percent from a year earlier to a record 3.35 million vehicles, while vehicle production worldwide will have gone up 7.2 percent from last year to 3.41 million cars.
Koji Endo, auto analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston in Tokyo, believes that Toyota is strong because it has ample money to invest in facilities and research that in turn allows it to produce cars that appeal to the market and cut costs, thereby producing more profits.
With Toyota booming on a "positive cycle" of healthy sales leading to more sales, it's definitely on track to overtake GM in annual vehicle production, he said.
"It's bound to happen either next year or the year after," Endo said. "But perhaps there isn't much point to the question. It doesn't make much sense to be comparing vehicle production numbers between the world's most profitable automaker and one that's on the verge of collapse."
Toyota said it expects to sell 8.85 million vehicles worldwide next year, up 9 percent from 8.09 million estimated for this year.
When not including its subsidiary automakers Hino and Daihatsu, Toyota plans to produce 8.11 million vehicles next year, up 10 percent from 7.37 million vehicles in 2005.
Watanabe played down Toyota's possible imminent No. 1 status in the world auto industry.
"We try to prepare our production and sales to respond to customer needs in every region," he told reporters. "I am not thinking much about whether we will become No. 1 in the world as a result of that."
Watanabe also brushed off fears about a possible U.S. political backlash of protective sentiment that intensified in the 1980s, noting that Toyota has boosted production and parts purchasing in the United States, and become a good corporate citizen.
"I do not anticipate trade friction to grow into a major problem at this time," he said.
Peter Morici, University of Maryland economist and auto industry expert, believes that GM, Ford Motor Co. and the
United Auto Workers, the U.S. labor union, do not enjoy much public sympathy, compared to the 1980s.
"I do not believe the U.S. public will support protection for GM. If the government does it, it will have to be veiled," he said.
Detroit-based General Motors has announced drastic cost cuts, including trimming 30,000 jobs, or 27 percent of its North American manufacturing jobs, and the closure of 12 facilities by 2008.
GM's U.S. market share fell to 26.2 percent in the first 10 months of this year compared with 33 percent a decade ago, the result of increasing competition from Asian rivals. Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered GM's debt to "junk" status earlier this year.
GM isn't the only U.S. automaker cutting costs.
Ford Motor Co., which reported a third-quarter loss of $284 million, has said it plans to eliminate about 4,000 white-collar jobs in North America early next year as part of a restructuring plan.
Ford Chairman and CEO Bill Ford has said he plans to announce U.S. plant closings and layoffs in January.
Watanabe said Toyota has succeeded because it followed its dream of being the first in the world to produce the best cars at the lowest costs. And Toyota isn't about to sit on its laurels, he said.
"It's critical we maintain our spirit of perpetual challenge," Watanabe said.
12-20-05, 08:37 AM
#15
Moderator
2006 is going to be a great year for Toyota. Lot's of new models coming out such as the next generation Camry/ES 330, LS 460, GS 450h, next generation Tundra/Sequoia and a whole slew of new vehicles. Go Toyota! Toyota is the epitome of Moving Forward. Lexus has the Passion Pursuit of Perfection. Not sure what's the slogan for Scion.
