TOYOTA - background & news

The Toyota Motor Corporation is a multinational corporation and now the world’s largest automaker in terms of sales, net worth, revenue, and profits.

It has been an industry leader since the 1960s and has consistently been more productive than its competitors. The company has been widely recognised for the quality of its products and production systems.

In 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created its first engine and in 1936, its first passenger car.

It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spin-off from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles.

In 1982, the Toyota Motor Company and Toyota Motor Sales merged into one company, the Toyota Motor Corporation.

It then started to establish new brands towards the end of ‘80s. It launched its luxury division Lexus in 1989.

Toyota is headquartered in Toyota City and Nagoya, and in Tokyo.

In addition to manufacturing automobiles, the company provides financial services through its division Toyota Financial Services and also builds robots.

Toyota has been successful because of its determined marketing approach of normality. It is a mass-market operator that makes car that are long-lasting and extremely reliable rather than status symbols.

Toyota’s range is one of the largest in the automobile world.

It is the only manufacturer able to propose an extended line-up of hybrid models in its range, principally through its luxury brand Lexus.

The brands bestsellers are Prius, RAV-4, Yaris and the two 4-wheel-drive Landcruiser and Hilux.

GREEN CREDENTIALS

Toyota has invested heavily in vehicles with lower emissions, for example, the Prius, based on technology such as the Hybrid Synergy Drive. It is considered the most widely rolled-out environment-friendly system in the automotive industry to date.

The manufacturer intends building a hybrid-electric system available on every vehicle it sells worldwide sometime in the 2010s. Hybrids are viewed by some automakers as a core segment of the future vehicle market.

Toyota is also aiming for zero waste and zero emissions as the ultimate group goal. The core objective is the continuation of development of hybrid technology and development of hydrogen fuel cell technology.

The Toyota Production System which revolutionised its business (and made it more profitable than all other car manufacturers combined) has been adapted to include its focus on the environment – a mass production plan to take on the challenge of new environmental targets. Indeed, 90 per cent of the current Prius car is recyclable.

However, it is worth pointing out that despite all of these efforts, in the US at least Toyota is still making and selling large quantities of full-size pick-up trucks as well as vast numbers of four-wheel drive vehicles, so whatever good we see it doing in other areas of the car industry must be tainted by this knowledge.

Toyota is already onto its third generation hybrid engine – which is incredible given that many manufacturers have not even begun to develop their first.