Toyota Motor has raised its production target for this year and plans to start buying batteries from Sanyo Electric to meet brisk demand for its hybrid vehicles, news reports said yesterday.
The world’s largest automaker now aims to produce 5.95 million Toyota-brand vehicles this year, up from a previous goal of 5.8 million, the Nikkei Shimbun business daily and other media reported without naming sources.
Toyota is enjoying brisk demand for its remodeled Prius, which has been Japan’s top-selling car in recent months as government incentives spur strong demand for fuel-efficient vehicles.
STRONG DEMAND
The Japanese giant will buy some 10,000 lithium-ion batteries a year from Sanyo from 2011 because its battery joint venture with Panasonic is having difficulty keeping up with strong demand, the Nikkei said.
Sanyo — which is being bought by Panasonic — now supplies nickel-metal hydride batteries to Honda Motor and US auto giant Ford. It also plans to supply lithium-ion batteries to Germany’s Volkswagen.
NO COMMENT
A Toyota spokesman declined to comment on the reports, which sent Sanyo shares soaring more than 10 percent to ¥247 (US$2.62), while Toyota shares gained 0.2 percent to ¥4,050, outperforming the wider market.
Toyota, which overtook US rival General Motors last year as the world’s top auto company, has idled plants and slashed thousands of jobs as it tries to recover from its first annual loss.
Earlier this year the company appointed Akio Toyoda as its new president, turning to the grandson of the company’s founder to rescue it from its biggest ever crisis.
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a
All 24 lawmakers of the main opposition Chinese Nationalists Party (KMT) on Saturday survived historical nationwide recall elections, ensuring that the KMT along with Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers will maintain opposition control of the legislature. Recall votes against all 24 KMT lawmakers as well as Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) and KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) failed to pass, according to Central Election Commission (CEC) figures. In only six of the 24 recall votes did the ballots cast in favor of the recall even meet the threshold of 25 percent of eligible voters needed for the recall to pass,
LETTER, FLAG FLAP: A Chinese man and woman reportedly tried to snatch a letter meant for Taiwanese winners, while China’s team took offense at a Taiwanese flag President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday condemned an alleged attempt by two Chinese to snatch a letter of congratulations handed to Taiwan’s taekwondo team after they won silver at the Summer World University Games in Germany on Wednesday. A Chinese man and woman reportedly tried to snatch a congratulatory letter to athletes Hung Jiun-yi (洪俊義), Jung Jiun-jie (鍾俊傑) and Huang Cho-cheng (黃卓乘) from the Ministry of Education, and then argued with reporters. “Why are you taking our things?” reporters asked the pair. “Does that say ‘Chinese Taipei’?” the two Chinese reportedly asked. Following the incident, Sports Administration Director-General Cheng Shih-chung (鄭世忠) wrote on Threads about