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BUSINESS
Toyota lowers 2009 global sales target
TOKYO -- Toyota lowered its global sales target for 2009 by 700,000 vehicles to 9.7 million Thursday, showing that even one of the world's most durable automakers is being hurt by rising material costs, a slowing U.S. market and soaring gas prices.
"We have been going at top speed up to now," President Katsuaki Watanabe told reporters at a Tokyo hotel after announcing the numbers. "It is time to set more cautious targets."
Toyota Motor Corp had previously set a 2009 global sales goal of 10.4 million vehicles.
The lower target would still be a 2 percent increase from the company's 2008 sales goal of 9.5 million. But even that figure was reduced last month from an initial 9.85 million units.
Toyota has been on such a potent growth track in recent years it is getting closer to ending General Motors Corp.'s 77-year run as the world's top automaker by sales.
Japan's top automaker sold more than 4.8 million vehicles worldwide in the first half this year, more than its U.S. rival's 4.5 million vehicles. The sales tallies for this year are too close to call, as GM is also struggling with the same industry problems and restructuring its operations.
What is clear from these sales revisions is that Toyota, which had so far averted the serious problems of its money-losing American rivals, is now grappling with the same industry woes.
Watanabe said he saw as "fundamental" the slowdown in the U.S. market as soaring gas prices not only crimps car purchases but drives an unprecedented shift in consumer demand from trucks to smaller fuel-efficient models.
By region, Toyota is projecting stagnant sales next year for both North America at 2.7 million vehicles and Japan at 2.25 million, unchanged from projected sales figures for this year.
Other markets were expected to grow modestly.
