TOYOTA Motor Corp lowered its global sales target for 2009 by 700,000 vehicles to 9.7 million yesterday, showing that even one of the world's most durable auto makers is being hurt by rising material costs, a slowing US 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 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 No. 1 auto maker by sales.
Japan's top auto maker sold more than 4.8 million vehicles worldwide in the first half of this year, slightly more than the US 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 is that these sales revisions show that Toyota, which had so far averted the serious problems of its money-losing American rivals, is now grappling with similar problems.
Watanabe said he saw as "fundamental" the slowdown in the US market as soaring gas prices not only crimp car purchases but drive an unprecedented shift in consumer demand from trucks to smaller fuel-efficient models.
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.
In Europe, Toyota plans to sell 1.3 million vehicles, up 4 percent from a projected 1.25 million vehicles this year. In Asia, it aims for 1.75 million vehicles, up 6 percent from 1.65 million this year. Sales in other regions are expected at 1.7 million vehicles next year, up from 1.65 million this year.
In his annual outlining of the company's business plan, Watanabe tried to sound an upbeat note by promising "green" vehicles.
He said that Toyota will speed up the delivery of a plug-in hybrid - which can be plugged into regular household electrical sockets - initially promised for sometime in 2010, to the end of 2009.
Gas-electric hybrids like the Prius deliver better mileage by switching between a gas engine and electric motor, and a plug-in hybrid can travel longer as an electric vehicle, using less gasoline than a regular hybrid.
Watanabe said Toyota is also planning to produce a "next-generation" electric vehicle in the early 2010s.