Toyota on Thursday recalled 2.3 million vehicles in North America to fix floor mat and carpet defects that could jam the accelerator — bringing its worldwide recalls to more than 12 million since late 2009.
Shares in the world’s largest automaker, however, rose more than 2 percent in Tokyo yesterday after investment bank Credit Suisse upgraded the firm to “outperform” from “neutral,” predicting it would manage to cut costs and boost operating profits.
Toyota shares were up 2.17 percent to end at ¥3,755 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it had asked Toyota to carry out the call-back, after a 10-month probe that ruled out problems with the vehicles’ electronic control systems.
The US agency said it hoped the new recalls would bring an end to the issue.
“As a result of the agency’s review, NHTSA asked Toyota to recall these additional vehicles, and now that the company has done so, our investigation is closed,” administrator David Strickland said in a statement.
Mamoru Kato, auto analyst at the Tokai Tokyo Research Center, said “the latest recall was a bit disappointing, but it was nothing surprising.”
“It was not like having a new problem emerge. The recall was an additional move to fix the earlier defect,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it was very surprising or serious.”
Yoshihiro Okumura, general manager at Chibagin Asset Management, said investors are now reacting more calmly to Toyota’s recalls.
“It seems that the recalls are starting to be viewed as Toyota’s measures to step up quality more so than to fix a malfunction,” Okumura told Dow Jones Newswires.
In 2008, Toyota ended General Motors’ 77-year reign as the world’s largest automaker, but has since faced the impact of the economic crisis, the recalls and a strong yen.
While net profit in the nine months to December quadrupled year-on-year on a post-crisis rebound, last year ended with Toyota losing market share to rivals in the US — its second-largest market by volume.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained