Toyota Motor Corp sold 10.8 million cars last year, a slight drop from the previous year, but more than enough to protect its title against Volkswagen AG as the world’s biggest carmaker for a fifth consecutive year.
While global sales — including from subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor Co and Hino Motors Ltd — fell 3.7 percent year-on-year last year, that was still enough for Toyota to stay ahead of VW, which delivered just over 9 million cars last year, a 2.3 percent decline from the year before.
Toyota had a troublesome year after safety scandals at a pair of subsidiaries disrupted production for months. While the company’s bet that demand for gas-guzzlers and hybrids will hold up in the face of electric vehicles (EVs), emerging rivals like China’s BYD Co (比亞迪) are rapidly making inroads to the global auto market. BYD sold 4.3 million cars last year — including 1.8 million EVs — a 41 percent jump from the previous year.
Photo: Reuters
In contrast, Toyota sold just 139,892 battery EVs last year. Hybrids accounted for more than 4.2 million of the firm’s total global sales.
Honda Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co both also saw global vehicle sales stagnate or fall last year, underscoring the need for the pair to combine and arrest their sliding market shares.
Honda’s sales slipped 4.6 percent to 3.8 million units last year, as production dropped 11 percent to 3.7 million vehicles. Sales at smaller Japanese rival Nissan decreased 0.8 percent to 3.3 million for the 12 months, while output declined 8.7 percent to 3.1 million units.
Annual data released by each automaker yesterday reinforced why Honda is looking to build scale by absorbing Nissan, a deal that would create a new global heavyweight capable of competing at the highest levels of the world’s automobile industry — at least in theory.
Meanwhile, Nissan is eliminating a work shift at two US vehicle assembly plants and trimming its hourly staff via buyouts as it mulls a possible sale to Honda.
The Yokohama-based automaker said on Wednesday it will move to a single shift from mid-April at one production line in each of the factories, and seek an unspecified number of voluntary buyouts or early retirements.
“We’re responding to the needs of the market based on where we are today,” David Johnson, the company’s senior vice president in charge of US manufacturing and supply chain, said in an interview. He declined to say how many fewer cars Nissan expects to produce or the amount of the estimated cost-savings from the reductions.
In November last year, after a disastrous set of quarterly earnings, Nissan announced plans to cut 9,000 jobs and slash production capacity by 20 percent.
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