Toyota will raise vehicle output by 11% next year, unseating General Motors as the world’s biggest vehicle manufacturer, a Japanese newspaper reported on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
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Toyota, whose profits and market value already dwarf those of its rivals, plans to raise group output to more than 9.2m vehicles worldwide in 2006, or nearly 1m more than its projection for 2005, business daily Nihon Keizai reportedly said.
Excluding minivehicle and truck units Daihatsu and Hino, Toyota’s own-brand production will rise 12% to 8.3m units next year, the newspaper said without citing sources, according to Reuters.
A Toyota official told the news agency the company had not yet finalised its production plans for next year.
But one analyst said it was feasible given the pace of Toyota’s expansion plans: “Given additional production and domestic and overseas plants that are scheduled to go on stream in FY2006/07 (ending March 2007), global production of about 8.3m units can be reached,” Merrill Lynch auto analyst Tatsuo Yoshida said in a note to clients cited by Reuters.
Toyota is picking up market share from loss-riddled GM in the US company’s home market, the report added.
The Detroit giant’s market share for October looks set to fall to a 25-year low of around 20.5%, New York-based Deutsche Bank analyst Rod Lache told Reuters.
Toyota had 13.4% of the US market in September, more than Chrysler’s 13.2% and up from 11.3% a year earlier, while GM’s share fell to 25.9% from 31.7%.
