Toyota confirms it is world’s prime automotive vendor, apologizes for security scandals

On Tuesday, Toyota reported that it and its subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor and Hino Motor bought 11.2 million automobiles in 2023, a 7.2% improve from the 12 months earlier than. Toyota’s closest competitor, the Volkswagen Group, delivered 9.24 million autos final 12 months, a 12% leap.

The corporate attributed its efficiency to robust demand in North America and Europe, in addition to the easing of a semiconductor scarcity that dates again to the COVID pandemic. Toyota gross sales in North America had been up 7% year-on-year and up 9.1% year-on-year in Europe.

Toyota’s hybrid sales had been additionally robust in 2023, regardless of early arguments that the carmaker was ignoring the shift to battery electrical autos. The corporate bought round 3.4 million hybrid autos final 12 months, up 31.4% from 2022. Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda is a skeptic of battery electrical autos, as an alternative supporting hybrids: Final week, Toyoda urged that battery EV adoption will peak at simply 30%.

Scandals and recollects

However Toyoda took a conciliatory tone on Tuesday by apologizing for questions of safety that threaten to harm the corporate’s model.

“I would like to express my deepest apologies to our customers and stakeholders for the inconvenience and concern caused by the successive irregularities at Hino Motors, Daihatsu and Toyota Industries,” Toyoda stated at a Toyota occasion, in response to Reuters.

Toyota halted shipments from Daihatsu in late December after an impartial third-party investigation uncovered 174 security irregularities in 64 fashions. Toyota has promised to announce plans for Daihatsu by mid-February, which might embrace measures like a change in management and dispatching Toyota engineers to watch the subsidiary’s operations.

On Monday, Toyota needed to briefly suspend shipments of 10 fashions on account of certification issues with diesel engines. An investigation reported that Toyota used totally different software program within the certification course of than what it utilized in mass manufacturing; the software program utilized in testing led to much less variation in horsepower output.

Toyota can be nonetheless grappling with the fallout from the decades-old Takata air bag scandal. On Monday, Toyota issued a “Do Not Drive” advisory for the house owners of fifty,000 autos within the U.S., particularly, the 2003-2004 Corolla, 2003-2004 Corolla Matrix, and the 2004-2005 RAV4 fashions.

Over 30 deaths and lots of of accidents world wide since 2009 are linked to Takata air luggage, which might unleash steel shrapnel inside autos when activated. Defective inflators have triggered over 100 million autos to be recalled worldwide.