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CAR TECH
Toyota sells 10.23mn vehicles in 2014, still world's top automaker
By Kyoko HASEGAWA
Tokyo (AFP) Jan 21, 2015


Volvo Cars appoints new US chief to turn sales around
Stockholm (AFP) Jan 21, 2015 - Swedish car manufacturer Volvo Cars announced the appointment Wednesday of a new chief executive for North America tasked with reviving the company's flagging US sales.

Despite generally booming car sales in the United States -- helped by falling fuel prices -- sales of Volvo cars in the country dropped by 8 percent to 58,000 in 2014.

Lex Kerssemakers, a Dutch national with 16 years experience in the company, currently responsible for product strategy, will oversee the company's "US Revival Plan" which targets annual sales of "over 100,000 cars in the medium term," the company said in a statement.

To do so, Volvo plans "a renewal of the entire product range by the end of 2017," it said.

"The US is a key market for the development of the group and today we get back onto the front foot. Volvo is not only in the US to stay, it is in the US to prosper," Kerssemakers added.

He will also be responsible for opening up "the full potential of the Canadian and Latin American markets".

Volvo increased its sales by 9 percent last year to 465,866 cars worldwide on the back of soaring sales in China and strong European sales.

The iconic Swedish brand was sold by the US car maker Ford to China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group in 2010.

It has no manufacturing in the Americas and exports cars from its factories in Sweden, Belgium, and soon from China where it has three plants.

Kerssemakers replaces Volvo's interim US chief executive Tony Nicolosi, appointed in 2013 to replace another American national who held the post for just over two years.

Toyota kept its title as the world's biggest automaker on Wednesday as it announced record sales of 10.23 million vehicles last year, outpacing General Motors and Volkswagen, but a shaky outlook for 2015 could see it lose the crown to its German rival.

The worldwide annual sales figure beat Volkswagen, which logged sales of 10.14 million vehicles, and US-based GM, which said it sold 9.92 million cars last year.

But Toyota also said sales would decline this year to an expected 10.15 million vehicles, as demand falls off in its home market.

That will likely mean Volkswagen will be in pole position this year as the German automaker rides momentum in emerging economies that could see it take the lead in global auto sales for the first time.

"Their focus is not No. 1," Peggy Furusaka, an auto-credit analyst at Moody's Investors Service, told Bloomberg News, referring to the Japanese firm.

"Toyota is more concerned about keeping profitability than chasing numbers. So for coming years, I wouldn't be surprised to see Toyota selling fewer cars than VW."

Toyota broke GM's decades-long reign as the world's top automaker in 2008 but lost the crown three years later as Japan's earthquake-tsunami disaster hammered production and disrupted the supply chains of the country's automakers.

However, in 2012 it once again overtook its Detroit rival, which sells the Chevrolet and luxury Cadillac brands.

Toyota boosted its fiscal year through March profit forecast to 2.0 trillion yen ($16.97 billion), and said revenue would come in at 26.5 trillion yen, as it saw strong results in North America while a sharply weaker yen inflated its bottom line.

But it earlier warned over a downturn in some other key Asian markets including Indonesia and Thailand, which has been hammered by political unrest.

There are also growing fears about the entire industry's prospects in China owing to concerns about the health of the world's number-two economy.

- Fuel-cell cars -

Toyota's upbeat announcement on Wednesday comes despite the firm struggling to recover its reputation for safety after the recall of millions of cars around the world for various problems, including an exploding air bag crisis at supplier Takata.

The maker of the Camry sedan and Prius hybrid has frozen the building of new plants for the three years until early 2016, and a Toyota executive at the Detroit auto show told AFP last week that the giant automaker is emphasising quality of sales rather than volume.

Among the moves, Toyota is pushing further into the fast-growing market for environmentally-friendly cars, especially in China where officials are struggling to contain an air pollution crisis.

Toyota said this month it had been swamped by domestic orders for its first mass market hydrogen fuel-cell car, with demand in the first month nearly four times higher than expected for the whole year.

The company received more than 1,500 orders for its "Mirai" sedan since its launch in mid-December. It had planned to sell 400 in Japan over 12 months.

It has also announced plans to develop components for hybrid vehicles with two Chinese automakers in an unprecedented technology-sharing deal aimed at increasing green car sales in the world's biggest vehicle market.

The deal marked a shift away from Japanese carmakers' traditional reluctance over such deals for fear of losing their competitive edge.

Previously, Toyota would make key components such as batteries and motors in high-cost Japan and then ship them to joint ventures overseas. But that drove up the price of models such as its Prius, which has seen sluggish sales in China.

Toyota shares slipped 0.93 percent to close at 7,588.0 yen in Tokyo, as the broader market fell into negative territory.

pb-kh/psr

Toyota

General Motors

Volkswagen

Takata


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CAR TECH
Congestion expected after Toyota green car orders soar
Tokyo (AFP) Jan 15, 2015
Toyota has been swamped by orders for its first mass market hydrogen fuel-cell car, the company said Thursday, with demand in the first month nearly four times higher than expected for the whole year. The Japanese auto giant said it had received more than 1,500 orders for its "Mirai" sedan since its launch in mid-December. It had planned to sell 400 in Japan over 12 months. Roughly 60 pe ... read more


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