Toyota Motor Corp said yesterday its global car production, disrupted by parts shortages from last month’s earthquake and tsunami, won’t return to normal until November or December.
Toyota president Akio Toyoda apologized to customers in a statement for the delays owing to the twin disasters that damaged suppliers in northeastern Japan.
“To all the customers who made the decision to buy a vehicle by us, I sincerely apologize for the enormous delay in delivery,” Toyoda said in a statement released before a press conference.
Photo: Bloomberg
Toyota, the world’s No. 1 automaker last year, says the March 11 disasters, which killed about 25,000 people, have already caused a production loss of 260,000 cars.
Earlier this week, Toyota resumed car production at all of its plants in Japan for the first time since last month’s massive earthquake and tsunami.
However, the Japan plants are operating at half capacity owing to parts shortages and it is unclear when they will return to full production. Toyota’s factories in China are also operating at 50 percent capacity.
In North America, Toyota has suspended production on Mondays and Fridays from Monday until June 3. During the same period, plants will run at half capacity on other weekdays and suspend production late next month for holidays in the US and Canada.
The company has pledged not to lay off any of its 25,000 workers and says it will use the extra time for training to make improvements at its 13 North American factories.
Toyoda said the automaker had sent workers into the disaster zone to help factories, dealers and suppliers recover, and was confident they would contribute to a “quicker recovery” of production.
Meanwhile, the company announced on Thursday it is recalling more than 300,000 sport utility vehicles (SUVs) in the US to fix faulty airbag sensors.
The automaker said the sensors — which are designed to detect vehicle roll angle — can malfunction and inadvertently cause the side curtain airbag and seatbelt to be activated.
The sensor malfunction does not prevent the airbag from deploying during a collision, Toyota said in a statement.
A Toyota spokesman said the automaker has received defect-related reports of “minor injuries, including a report of a person’s hand being cut by a seatbelt in March.”
The recall will affect 214,000 RAV4 vehicles and 94,000 Highlander and Highlander HV vehicles from the 2007 and 2008 model years.
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