TOKYO (Reuters). Toyota Motor Corp will keep its global output target for 2013 nearly unchanged from this year at 9.9 million vehicles despite a production cut at home, the Nikkei reported. The leading Japanese automaker aims to produce 5.6 million Toyota and Lexus brands outside Japan next year, up more than 6 percent from its 2012 target, the business daily said. In Japan, it will manufacture 3.1 million vehicles, down 10 percent from this year’s target, the daily said.
In addition, Toyota expects its Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors Ltd. units to churn out another 1 million vehicles. The resulting total of about 9.9 million vehicles is nearly unchanged from the record 9.89 million units planned for 2012. Toyota also cut its Japanese sales target to 1.36 million units for next year, down about 20 percent from its projection for this year, the Japanese daily reported. The Japanese new-car market is expected to shrink in 2013 because subsidies for environmentally friendly vehicles have expired, the paper added. The company’s global group sales will likely reach a record 9.7 million units for 2012, beating the 9.37 million units sold in 2007, the daily said, and make Toyota the world’s No. 1 automaker. It was No. 3 in 2011.
General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG are competing for the No. 2 spot in global sales this year. Last month, Toyota trimmed its group-wide production forecast for calendar year 2012 to 9.89 million units in the wake of plunging car sales in China following a territorial row between Asia’s two biggest economies.
The automaker slashed production in China by 40-50 percent following anti-Japan protests in September, the business daily said, adding that the company had a target of selling 1 million vehicles there this year.
