Volkswagen wants to overtake Toyota in terms of profitability and volume. Its sales and marketing chief, Michael Kern, told Auto Motor Und Sport magazine that VW is bringing 12 new models to market and increasing its presence in the US, Russia, India and other markets to help achieve this goal. Separately, news agency dpa-AFX said that internal plans call for Volkswagen to gain market leadership in 2014 or 2015.
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VW assumes that Toyota will sell 9.34m vehicles this year, more than GM, while the German automaker will shift over 6m.
CEO Martin Winterkorn said at the Frankfurt show earlier this month that VW wants to overtake Toyota’s leadership in technology and profitability.
But the Harbour Report 2007 showed that there is still a big gap in productivity between VW and Toyota though the study, as reported by Automobilwoche, found that VW was improving. In 2006 it took 31.5 hours to produce a C-segment Golf at VW’s Mosel plant, down from 33 hours at the end of 2003. However, in the same period, Toyota reduced the time it takes to produce a Corolla at its UK plant in Burnaston, from 28.8 hours to 20.7 hours.
Toyota has also made significant improvements in the D segment. Between 2003 and 2006, it reduced the time taken to produce the (also Burnaston-built) Avensis from 33.7 hours per car to 23.7 hours. Volkswagen managed to reduce time taken to produce its Passat from 36 hours (2004) to 32.6 hours in 2006.
