Toyota's Worldwide Production Up 55 Percent For The Year
If anybody harbored plans to kick Toyota in the shins and topple them from their top spot as the world’s largest automaker: Well, it didn’t work. Wags all over the world were predicting the worst for Toyota, but the numbers tell a totally different story. In the first five months of 2010, all units of Toyota produced 55.1 percent more cars worldwide than in the same period of 2009. The following table speaks for itself.
PS: Volkswagen, the company that wants to dethrone Toyota by 2018, better try harder. From January to May 2010, the Volkswagen Group registered a growth of 18.1 percent.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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The note of caution to the comparison, though, is that VW's 18% growth is in sales, Toyota's is in production. Without knowing what the starting and ending inventory levels were, it's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison. We really need Toyota's *sales* growth numbers. Undoubtedly they will be strong, though I suspect a fair bit less than 55% (the May production growth of 28% seems like it's more in range ...).