Reuters — 2023-04-27
Automotive Industry
Japan's Toyota Motor Corp set a global annual output record in the business year ended in 2023 March, just edging past its target of 9.1m vehicles as factory disruption from global chip supply woes and pandemic lockdowns eased.
But the world's biggest automaker by sales warned it continued to see impacts from the long-running global chip shortage, saying it remained hard to predict its effect going forward.
Toyota said on Thursday it produced 9.13m vehicles in the 12 months through 2023 March 31, a fraction ahead of its target, though that goal was downgraded twice from an initial goal for the year of around 9.7m amid industry disruption.
In the previous year vehicle output was 8.57m.
Global sales for the 12 months ended 2023 March rose to 9.61m vehicles from 9.51m in the prior year, setting another annual record for the company.
The company didn't release new sales or production targets for the current business year that started in 2023 April.
It disclosed it has so far sold just 17,473 battery electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide, including those of its luxury Lexus brand, for the first three months of 2023.
That compared with 24,466 battery EVs sold by Toyota worldwide for the whole of 2022.