Toyota Motor’s Global Production and Sales Are Expected to Slightly Increase in 2020

Toyota Motor announced global car production and sales estimates for 2019 year and plans for 2020 in December 2019. According to the announcement, unit sales in 2019 are estimated to have increased by 1.4% to 9.68 million units and production by 2.0% to 9.60 million units. The results were very close to Toyota’s global production and sales plans announced at the end of 2018 (sales: 9.68 million units, production: 9.90 million units). In 2020, global sales are planned to increase by 0.7% and production by 1.0%. While the global market is expected to be strong, Toyota predicts the domestic market to fall below the previous year, and accordingly domestic production is also expected to decline compared to the previous year. Toyota changed its executive structure in January 2020 for the third consecutive year on January 1, but with this organizational change, but changes to executive officers and chief executives are very limited. This means that management issues will be dealt with the current system for the time being. Looking at the main models which are scheduled or expected to undergo full-model change in 2020, there are the Yaris, Land Cruiser and Harrier among others. By adding not only small cars which generally produce little profit but also high-end SUVs, fluctuations in the model mix are expected to be modest. In addition to the full-size wagon Granace which was launched in Japan at the end of 2019, Toyota plans to release its first mass-manufactured BEV (a micro-sized model), the Lexus UX300e, and BEVs based on the C-HR and Izoa sister models in the Japanese, European and Chinese markets, 2020 marking Toyota’s first year of full-scale BEV launches of BEVs. As for electric vehicles other than ZEVs, HEVs and PHEVs are expected to increase as immediate and realistic solutions to environmental issues. In the summer of 2020, the RAV4 Prime (US name) is scheduled to be launched, becoming Toyota’s second PHEV on the market following the Prius PHV. In 2020, Toyota will become one of the “Worldwide TOP Partners” which support the Tokyo 2020 Games. Toyota wants to use the event as a place for introducing its technology, and will not only provide many electric vehicles, but also unveil its MaaS-dedicated vehicle the e-Palette that uses Level 4 self-driving technology. At the event, Toyota intends to improve the social acceptance of autonomous driving.

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