Toyota forecasts 10.77 million units in sales for 2020

MANILA: Japanese automaker Toyota is anticipating target sales of over 10.77 million car units worldwide in the upcoming year. This is a marginally larger target compared to their 2019 sales forecast of 10.72 million units. Vehicles from their two subsidiaries,

Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors Ltd. are also included in the forecast. This would be another milestone for Toyota, exceeding their previous targets for the fourth consecutive year and topping 10 million units for the seventh straight year.

Should Toyota achieve these figures, it would sit them right next to Volkswagen, which currently holds the number one spot for most automobile sales. Volkswagen sold over 10.08 million units in 2018. The German automaker announced back in October that they expect deliveries to still remain consistent for the upcoming quarters.

Toyota is expecting a good bulk of their sales to come from overseas markets. They forecasted sales in the local Japanese market to only be around 2.26 million units. This is an almost 4 percent decrease in domestic sales. Projections for domestic production will only be around 3.24 million units, a 5.3 percent decline. However, despite the direction of the data, Toyota still intends to maintain the 3 million thresholds in order to retain their labor force.

On the other hand, they anticipate that global sales will grow by 2 percent to 8.50 million units, which should make up for the gap in domestic sales.

To meet the demands, the Japanese automaker will be increasing global production by 1 percent to 10.90 million vehicles starting 2020. Output by their overseas manufacturing outfits are expected to be at approximately 6.49 million units. This is a 4.3 percent increase in their global manufacturing endeavours in an effort to meet worldwide demand.

This optimistic announcement was made amidst rising trade conflict and economic volatility in the auto industry. The market’s demand has been shifting more towards electric vehicles, self-driving technologies, and ride-hailing business models, causing increased pressure on car manufacturers to remain competitive.

Numerous auto companies have already begun seeking alliances to combat this, including Toyota who has partnerships and equity stakes with Suzuki Motor Corp., Mazda Motor Corp., and Subaru Corp.

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