In a memo that surprises no-one that has followed TTAC’s extended coverage of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Toyota’s U.S. chief  Bob Carter warns dealers that deliveries of parts and cars could be severely restricted for months to come. “What we don’t know are vehicle production levels for May through July,” Bob Carter wrote in a memo. “The potential exists that supply of new vehicles could be significantly impacted this summer.” You have seen this coming. (Read More…)

Better get used to this: Barely had Toyota announced that it will reopen its Japanese plants, then Toyota U.S.A. chimes in and says: “We are shutting down.” Welcome to the supply chain gang. Toyota is running its N.A. vehicle plants on what they call “a reduced schedule.”

Meaning: (Read More…)

When we worked on the Phaeton launch in 2001, we said it had “more computers than a small company.” It had 56. Today’s cars have anywhere between 30 and 100 computers on board. They are small microcontrollers that typically chat with each other via a CAN bus. You don’t take just any microcontroller for the job. They need to hold up to the harsh environment inside of a car. Their makers need to hold up to the harsh environment presented by the purchasing departments of automakers that squeeze them for every penny. As a result of both, there are only a few players in this field. This is the story of one of them. (Read More…)

It is the morning after a 7.4 magnitude tremor,the strongest aftershock so far, located in approximately the same area as the devastating March 11 quake, rattled northern Japan. Most of the increasingly quake-blasé Japan shrugged it off.

Then in the late Japanese morning, a bit of good news from and for the automotive sector. Toyota Japan will re-open for business on April 18. (Read More…)

We’ve already asked the cui bono question about Japan’s post-tsunami parts paralysis, and though opinions vary about precisely cui will be doing the bonoing, it’s clear that some are already doing better than others. For more clarity on the developing picture, hit the jump for TTAC’s roundup of the latest parts paralysis news. (Read More…)

Nobody dares to say it aloud, but parts of the “Buy American” contingent are secretly high-fifing when bad news from Japan is on TV or on the net. U.S. car companies themselves aren’t so sure, one missing chip, or an absent acceleration sensor can bring a whole line down. And of course they won’t be caught saying something reprehensible. Leave it to the Deutsche Bank and The Nikkei to end the (dis)grace period and to come out with their analysis of which carmaker might gain from the Tohoku tsunami. (Read More…)

Everybody thinks the Japanese auto industry will re-open for business next week, and will happily produce away. This is clearly not the case. What will be opened will proceed very carefully through the minefields of missing parts and cut power. A lot will not be re-opened at all.

When we reported yesterday about the flash message that Toyota will restart the Corolla production at the Sagamihara plant, we deduced that this could mean a prolonged outage for their new Miyagi plant up north. As often, there is a bigger story lurking in a smaller story. (Read More…)

Living with container transit times in your head, you know when the parts pipeline from Japan to overseas locations should run dry. Japan to Europe is about four weeks. And exactly 4 weeks after the tsunami hit in Tohoku, Honda will set its Swindon plant in the UK to max conserve. According to Reuters, Honda will reduce its UK output by half, starting on April 11. (Read More…)

Paul Nolasco at Toyota sends us a message saying that Toyota has “decided to resume production at the Sagamihara Plant of Central Motor.  Production is to start on April 11.”

Why should this impact the Yaris? Please bear with us.

It is too late to reach anyone at Toyota to find out the exact significance of the message. What follows is an educated guess until we can update you with firsthand information. (Read More…)

Not very unexpectedly, ratings agency Moody’s is looking into taking it’s view of Toyota’s long-term debt down a notch. Usually reliable Reuters says that Moody’s “put its credit rating on Toyota Motor Corp on review for a possible downgrade.” For the obvious reasons, namely disruptions to Toyota’s supply chain from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and subsequent power cuts. Even if bond ratings put you to sleep, you might be interested in Moody’s views on the resumption on normal car production. (Read More…)

“Toyota will not be resuming vehicle production at most of its plants next week, contrary to what has been reported.”

This was Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco’s answer when we reached him this (Tokyo) morning for a comment on a story that had appeared in The Nikkei [sub] at 2 a.m. last night. (Emphasis ours.) Without quoting sources, the Nikkei had written that “Toyota Motor Corp. has decided to reopen most of its domestic automobile plants as early as next week to start churning out a limited number of models.” This is clearly humbug. The Nikkei has done it again. (Read More…)

Toyota and Microsoft will host a joint live webcast tomorrow, Wednesday, April 6 at 1 p.m. Pacific. “Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corp., to discuss a collaboration between the two companies.,” says Microsoft. (Read More…)

In an oddly-timed 2 am (Tokyo time) filing, The Nikkei [sub] writes that “Toyota Motor Corp. has decided to reopen most of its domestic automobile plants as early as next week to start churning out a limited number of models.” (Read More…)

When you have a problem, there usually is no shortage of well-meant advice. When it emerged that power shortage is the biggest problem of the quake- and tsunami-stricken Japanese auto industry, or the Japanese industry as whole, good advice came pouring in. It ranged from “why don’t they just park an aircraft carrier by the dock” to “what’s wrong with using generators?” What’s wrong with them? (Read More…)

Looking at the supply chain and transit times, it was easy to predict that the big American knock-on effect of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami would start to happen around – right now. To nobody’s surprise, The Nikkei [sub] writes this Tuesday morning in Tokyo that Toyota “is highly likely to halt all manufacturing operations at its factories in North America later this month due to parts supply disruptions.” It goes on to say that “the scale and the duration of the expected shutdown have yet to be decided, but all of Toyota’s 14 factories in North America could be affected.”

I could write that and finally go to bed, but my mother had told me to believe nobody. Not even a respected newswire that gave its name to the main Japanese stock index? Not even that. An early call to Toyota HQ reaches spokesman Dion Corbett, who has a completely different story. (Read More…)