Toyota is sticking to a global sales target of 9.34m in 2007 despite worries a slow domestic market, the company president said on Monday.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Toyota Motor, which recently beat General Motors to top slot in worldwide vehicle sales for the first half of the year, set the target late last year, the Associated Press noted.
The automaker’s president Katsuaki Watanabe told the news agency there had been no change but regional reviews were in progress.
“At this time, we have no plans to change them,” he told AP in Tokyo.
The news agency said Toyota’s 2007 target was 6% up on the 8.8m vehicles sold in 2006, and would be the ninth straight year of global sales growth.
In comparison, GM, which does not make public forecasts, and its affiliates sold 9.1m vehicles worldwide last year, AP added.
Watanabe defelected a question about the prospects of becoming number one, the report said.
“We must be thankful many customers are choosing to buy our products. Being No. 1 is a result of that,” he told AP.
Watanabe said assembly plant closures due to earthquake damage at a supplier was expected to cost Toyota about 55,000 vehicles overall but the automaker planned to catch up later this year.
He told the Associated Press Toyota would contribute more to efforts against global warming and pollution by working on new technologies, including plug-in hybrids.
Toyota would continue to work to become a good corporate citizen in the US and follow its principle of producing cars where they’re sold.
Analysts have told AP Toyota may beat GM in global vehicle sales and production for the full year as soon as this year, robbing the US-based automaker of the title it has held for 70 years.
In the first quarter, Toyota sold more cars and trucks around the world than GM for the first time ever, but Toyota’s worldwide sales in the April-June quarter fell below GM’s, AP added, noting that Toyota has long beaten GM in profitability, too.
