Further to Ed Niedermeyer’s comments on local content of cars, Toyota announces changes to the most precious content of all: Who’s in the top slots of their presences abroad. In one fell swoop, Toyota replaced leading positions in the U.S.A. and Europe with local content. (Read More…)
You thought the strikes that affected Honda and Toyota in China are over, and both are happily churning out cars again? That makes two of us. But we are mistaken. (Read More…)
It stands to reason that Japanese car makers would rejoice over rising wages in competing China and over an appreciating Chinese currency. Rising wages make production there more expensive, a rising Yuan makes exports more expensive. Both should give the Japanese more breathing room. That reasoning is falling by the wayside. The Nikkei [sub] reports that these developments pose ”serious threats to Toyota’s profitability in China, strategic challenges that other Japanese companies must also deal with.” Just goes to show that you need to be careful what you wish for. And wait who else should worry. (Read More…)
Toyota was (after Honda) the second Japanese car company that came down with the current Chinese strike bug. Toyota is gladly taking a back seat on this. They solved their problems much quicker than Honda. Toyota said today that their largest plant in China will definitely be open for business on Monday. (Read More…)
A strike at two Toyota-affiliated parts makers brought Toyota’s largest assembly plant in China to a halt. No parts, no cars. Toyota’s factory in the port city of Tianjin near Beijing stopped production on Friday. A day later, it is unclear if production would resume on Monday, Reuters says.
The strike at a small plastic maker stops production at Toyota’s most important plant in China. (Read More…)
The Honda strikes have been settled – more or less. Now it’s Toyota’s turn. Workers at an auto parts factory in Tianjin, China, run by a Chinese subsidiary of Toyoda Gosei, 42 percent owned by Toyota, went on strike Thursday and had not returned to their jobs today, a Toyoda Gosei spokesman confirmed to the New York Times. The factory makes plastic parts for a FAW-Toyota joint venture assembly plant in Tianjin. It’s not the only strike that affects Toyota. (Read More…)
Ron Gettelfinger retired and Bob King took his place as President of the UAW. Mr King has some pretty big shoes to fill, but the name is a good start. After all, Mr Gettelfinger helped persuade President Obama to bail our GM and Chrysler (can’t say I blame him, quid pro quo, and all that). So what can Mr King do to really show the rank and file that he means business? Better working conditions? Input into designing cars? More job security? Nope. His next step is to make sure that Detroit and the transplants are evenly matched, so to speak. (Read More…)
Where would market research companies be without their sugar daddies, the car companies? There is no consumer product that is more expensive than a car, and nowhere is the amount of research money spent by unit sale higher than in the car industry. Research for a new car can be as crude as a few pictures and a questionnaire, or it can be something that is appropriately called a “clinic study,” with customers as lab rats. (Read More…)
Toyota is getting out of the carmageddon-caused and recall-related funk and is moving forward with worldwide expansion plans. According to The Nikkei [sub], Toyota has resurrected all key projects planned before the financial crisis. (Read More…)
A lawsuit brought in California against Toyota led to the disclosure of allegedly damning documents that could cost Toyota another huge fine if the documents contain what the lawyers say. Unless lawyers (or the media) were asleep at the wheel. According to USA Today, these documents “point to possible delays involving an earlier safety issue, one that could result in loss of steering control.” USA Today says records that are part of the lawsuit show that Toyota was dealing with cracking and breaking steering relay rods in the U.S. for at least 11 years before it recalled 330,000 pickups and SUVs in Japan to replace the rods — and 12 years before its 2005 recall of nearly a million similar trucks in the U.S.
Sounds kind of familiar. I’m not suffering from Alzheimer yet, so let’s go on a fact-finding mission to the TTAC archives … (Read More…)
When Toyota announced their share purchase / NUMMI deal with Tesla, the greenies rejoiced, the skeptics said it’s just an elegant way to unload NUMMI. Toyota said they are mildly interested in Tesla, in a venture capital kind of way. As in: here is some money and a factory we no longer need. Would be great if something comes of it. Well, they will actually build a car together. Not the Model S as many thought. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s build a prototype first. (Read More…)
I’ve declared many times on TTAC that I’m a bit of what you folks across the pond would call a liberal. I believe people should have a baseline in terms of living standards, but people should still work for the better things in life. The state should be there to help people, not sustain them. My point is that when an entity gets too much power (or THINKS it has) then the balance of power is shifted and seldom ever for the better. Everything is good is moderation. I feel the same way about Unions. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not anti-union. Unions have done a lot of good for the common working person. They fought for better working environments, better pay, better job security, etc. It is impossible to deny the good they’ve done. But like Harvey Dent said in “The Dark Knight”, “You can either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain”. And unfortunately, this article doesn’t exactly show unions in a good light.
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Woken up by the Tata Nano warning shot (which so far seems to be a dud), everybody agrees that the key to making India “the next China” is to start small. Why does Suzuki own more than half of India’s market? Small cars. And motorcycles. Another key to emerging markets is to give people an easy upgrade path from two wheels to four wheels. Remember how BMW got started? Remember that the initial business plan for the Volkswagen was to offer citizens of the Third Reich a car for the price of a motor cycle?
No wonder manufacturers are scouring their line-up for cars small enough for the huge Indian market. (Read More…)
How did Tokyo digest Toyota’s lackluster U.S. May sales performance? In a market that forged ahead by 19 percent, Toyota grew only 6.7 percent. Even more embarrassing, other Japanese brands like Mazda (+ 35 percent), Subaru (+35 percent), or Nissan (+24 percent) had outpaced the market. When Tokyo woke up to the bad news this morning, everybody ran to the phone, called their broker and … (Read More…)
The Lexus LF-A is sold out. Your $375k may now resume burning a hole in your pocket, bank account, investment portfolio, Scrooge McDuck-style treasure vault. Bonus LF-A trivia point (courtesy: Automotive News [sub]): one out of every three LF-As sold in Europe went to Germany. And that’s all Toyota will say about that. Meanwhile, ToMoCo’s other, more “mission critical” sales numbers are slightly less inscrutable…
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