At the end of the call they list Toyota’s production capacity in each region, as follows:
US+Canada 2.02M
Europe 805K
Africa 200K
Australia 100K
Asia, incl China 1.768M
South America 151K
Global total outside Japan: 4.9M
Japan 3.8M
Global total for Toyota: 8.7M for Toyota

These numbers exclude Daihatsu and Hino.

In Japan Toyota, Daihatsu and Hino produced 5.1M in the past year. Add this to the 4.9M production capacity outside Japan and you get: 10M.
In addition Daihatsu just opened a new factory in Japan and several more Toyota factories are coming online soon.

If I’ve understood this all correctly, Toyota already exceeds 10M and is closing in on 11M worldwide production capacity. That’s a lot!

It’s a drop TO 1.25 trillion yen, not a drop OF 1.25 trillion yen.

My bad, dawg.

Reading comprehension > Mj0lnir.

Sorry about that.

Hmmm…must have an MBA here.
Look, sorry to hurt your feelings but I need to point out that in fact I have two degrees, Philosophy and Religious Studies.
I know, I know…nothing to really brag about or make money with.
But it does help a LITTLE.
I also am a VP running a wonderful manufacturing company with my brothers with a brand well known throughout the world as the best.
And, we are all very pround that we have never hired an MBA.We have never hired anyone without the passion and the knowledge and love of our industry.
And, I am really, REALLY sorry for all the capitals.

I’ve had/have a Wrangler, a Ranger, Grand Cherokees, a Liberty, a Ram, a Mustang, a Pathfinder.

I currently have an FX35. Nice car, yet so many “minor” issues with it like paint peeling or small rust spots or a cd player that no longer plays burned cd’s that it too is becoming unfun.

Basically, I’ve had just as many issues with imports as I’ve had with domestics, so I can hate them all equally.

However, I recognize that the decisions a car manufacturer makes don’t actually take affect until years later. It’s even longer before the general population starts to buy into those ideas.

Toyota is a great company who builds great (albeit nothing I get really enthusiastic about) cars. However, Ford and GM have made some strides to turn things around.

On the flip side, Toyota has made some mistakes as well (rushing the Tundra to market and having the reliability issues that come along with that rush, for example).

Putting things in perspective, Toyota has made an incredible run at GM to unseat them as the top car manufacturer. GM has been in that seat for a long time, all the while building a bunch of cars and trucks that many perceive as inferior to Toyota. It’ll be interesting to see if Toyota can maintain that momentum. We’re seeing signs of it slowing already.

In the end, the increased competition is good for all of us consumers. Sometimes I think the TTAC community is a little heavy on the anti domestic bias.

I looked at profit from China.

The Chinese joint ventures of Toyota brought in $1250 of net profit per vehicle (that’s called equity earnings) over the last year.

The other day I figured it was around $400 per vehicle for GM in Q1.

So, the Chinese joint ventures of Toyota bring in 3 times more profit per vehicle than the Chinese joint ventures of GM.

I thought you all would like to know that.

The headline needs to be changed. Pronto.

High-ho pronto! Away!

It’s a drop TO 1.25 trillion yen, not a drop OF 1.25 trillion yen.

I’ve often THOUGHT we should drown dimwitted stiffs that use too many capitals and are envious of anyone with an education.

That is roughly equal to the 6 billion pound figure you quoted using todays .51 pound to the dollar rate.

I’m reading your posts. I disagree with your characterization of this as a blip, and I also fail to understand why we need to lambast GM when posting about Toyota.

Bad decisions are bad decisions.

Yeah, but how would the usual suspect pro-doms get their kicks out of that? The only good thing about a forum? The ignore function.

The headline needs to be changed. Pronto.

The reason I have always quietly admired the Japanese car companies is that while the American automakers followed trends with all their dollar and manufacturing mights, the Japanese invested into what they saw as the future.
It was economically and reliable cars.
Sure, they were catering to a few at the time, but they kept investing in this R&D.
They invested, and lost, money initially on the Prius…believing in what was to come.
THIS is why we should, after the lawyers, drown all the MBAs in Michigan.
Somewhere, during the 1960,70 period, the engineers, the car guys, got pushed out and replaced by the money guys…the MBAs!!!

Today, its all about the return on investment for the share-holders, NOT the best car for the future.
PLEASE return to the day when CAR guys ran the companies…not the MBAs from Harvard!

Toyota’s profits for 2008 were UP 4.5% (fiscal year ended March, 2008). We are looking at a FORECAST 28% reduction in profits for the fiscal year-end that’s nearly 11 months away.

Toyota could end up beating that forecast by a significant margin.

Further, if you get people into your trucks and they like them, perhaps they’ll buy your cars. More money.

Toyota probably didn’t accurately forecast owner loyalty nor the sharp drop in truck sales but they are still in the game and, most importantly, they do not RELY on truck profits to get by.

In my first post, I state that although Toyota’s dropped £2.3 billion (Mj0lnir, where did you get the figure $12 billion?), this is just an outlier. Toyota, this year, have raised their prices to reflect the rise in raw material costs; something which hurt EVERYONE’S bottom line.

If this time next year Toyota still posts another drop (or worse still a loss) then we can talk about Toyota “losing their way” or mismanagement. But for now, let’s just see how this pans out. Unlike GM, Toyota has not posted record losses or haemorraged market share. This is their first drop in profits for SEVEN YEARS and yet people want us to jump on Toyota! Admittedly, they cocked up some of their forecasting, but overall, they’re posting a £6 BILLION profit in a hard economy like we have now. So, overall, the picture isn’t too bad for them.

Also, this is a FORECAST from Toyota. So, we’re criticising them, for something that hasn’t happened yet!

In my second post, I talked about why I “hate” on the domestics. I don’t “hate” the domestics (I’ll come to that later), but I’m trying to show people that we jump on the domestics because after 8 years, they still haven’t got the message. We don’t pick on Detroit for a laugh! We criticise them because we’ve seen nothing that resembles a turnaround!

Again, people “coincidentally” missed the comment about me giving kudos to Ford, because they’re actually making progess in turning themselves around. But why let a fact like that get in the way of trying to make me look biased….?

Well said.

Toyota’s profits dropping 28% equates to Detroit sucking in many people’s minds.

There are enough topics about Detroit and its woes here, in this one we should keep it to Toyota’s.

Personally, I think its GREAT to hear some bad news about Yota. Keep it coming!

Thanks

If vehicles do not sell in the US they will simply raise the incentives.

In Canada Toyota/Lexus lowered their prices to reflect the strenght of the Canadian dollar.

If investing in bad products (trucks and SUV’s) and failing to correctly forecast the market causes a profit and sales decline, it’s bad business. Period.

Just because the company in question has competitors doing an even worse job doesn’t excuse these numbers.

It’s a symptom of the bias posters have here that the response is “Well, Toyota’a a good company and GM is worse.”

An unbiased response that supports Toyota and acknowledges it’s past performance would be “Gee, I hope Toyota goes back to making smart decisions like it did a couple of years ago. They’re a strong company, they’ll be okay.”.

It’s pathetic that a company can see a $12 billion dollar drop in profits from bad decision making and the TTAC posting response is “GM is worse.”

As I’ve said before- there’s a bias here. It’s okay to have one, just don’t pretend it doesn’t exist.

How likely is that scenario with profits dropping 28%?

When the big 2.801 can raise prices on their goods without customers backing away, sell vehicles at a good profit, have a good image of quality and reliability, have a management which thinks long term (not short), have a market capitalisation of £90 billion AND turn a £6 billion profit, but STILL call it a failure, then maybe people will stop “hating” on the domestics.

Until they show an effort to turnaround, maybe then will people take them seriously.

P.S It’s no coincidence that people are starting to respect Ford as they are showing signs of pulling themselves back into a decent shape…