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Toyota cuts production target by 300,000 vehicles due to parts and chips shortages

TOKYO - Toyota cut its annual production target by 300,000 vehicles on Friday as rising COVID-19 infections slowed output at parts factories in Vietnam and Malaysia, compounding a global shortage of auto chips. "It's a combination of the coronavirus and semiconductors, but at the moment it is the coronavirus that is having the overwhelming impact," Kazunari Kumakura, an executive at the world's biggest car maker, said after the company revised its production target. Unlike other big global automakers that were forced earlier to scale back production plans, Toyota had managed to avoid cuts to output because it had stockpiled key components along a supply chain hardened against disruption following northeast Japan's devastating earthquake in 2011. Toyota's announcement on Friday is a further sign that no part of the global car industry has escaped the affects of a pandemic that has sapped sales and is hobbling its ability to take advantage of the recovery in demand that followed the initial waves of COVID-19. Car sales in China in August fell by almost a fifth from a year earlier because there were fewer vehicles for people to buy. Toyota now expects to build 9 million vehicles in the year to March 31, rather than 9.3 million. It did not revise its 2.5 trillion yen ($22.7 billion) operating profit forecast for the business year. Adding to a 360,000-vehicle cut in worldwide production in September, Toyota said on Friday it will reduce output by a further 70,000 this month and by 330,000 in October. It hopes to make up some of that lost production before its year-end. Demand for chips has soared during the pandemic as consumer electronic companies rush to meet stay-at-home demand for their smartphones, tablets and other devices. A heavy reliance on Southeast Asian factories for parts is a headache for Toyota, but its also a problem for its rivals that have struggled with what Volkswagen has described as "very volatile and tight" chip supplies. The German carmaker has warned it may need to cut production further as a result. Ford last month shut down production at a plant in Kansas that builds its best-selling F-150 pick up because of parts supply woes, with Renault extending partial stoppages at factories in Spain. Mercedes this month said it expects chip shortages to significantly lower third quarter sales. (Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Kim Coghill) Plants/Manufacturing Lexus Toyota

2013 Lexus ES350

Finally Saying Goodbye To Its Camry Roots
In its equivalent world of breakfast foods, the Lexus ES350 is unquestionably the pancake. While its siblings may offer more interesting textures, flavors and consistencies - a generally more exciting culinary experience - the four-door ES is designed with 'indistinct' as its middle name. Its objective is to please just about every entry-level luxury buyer once it ends up on their plate.
Even after a complete redesign for the 2013 model year, the sixth-generation Lexus ES350 emerges every bit as family-friendly and non-polarizing as its predecessors. It is the everyman's luxury sedan, offering attractive pricing and a satisfying fill of amenities and features with the sweetness of a long warranty and polished customer service to back things up.

Toyota will bring Lexus-based Platform 3.0 autonomous vehicle to CES

The Toyota Research Institute says it will bring its next-generation Platform 3.0 automated driving vehicle to CES next week, an autonomous test car that is notable for incorporating the sensors and cameras into the body, rather than as ungainly attachments, and with the spinning LIDAR rooftop sensor replaced by a more sleek panel of sensors. Platform 3.0 is built on a Lexus LS600hL. Toyota Research Institute says it enlisted CALTY Design Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. and engineers at Toyota's nearby North America R&D center to conceal the equipment. As a result, Platform 3.0 gets a new rooftop weather and temperature proof panel, which it says was inspired by off-road motorcycle helmets, integrated into the available space in the sunroof compartment to minimize height. It's also embellished with chrome trim along the side, where it meets the roofline, and the rear swoops down to integrate with the LS's contour lines. The team also managed to consolidate computational electronics and wiring into a small box in the trunk. Toyota says the Platform 3.0 is one of the most perceptive autonomous test vehicles on the road today, with a design makes the test vehicle easy to build at scale. It gets a Luminar LIDAR system boasting a 200-meter, 360-degree range (the previous version only tracked the forward direction), enabled by four high-res LIDAR scanning heads that help it better see dark objects. Shorter-range LIDAR sensors feature low on all four sides of the vehicle, one on each front quarter panel and on the front and rear bumpers, to detect low-level and smaller objects, like children or road debris. Production begins this spring at the Toyota Motor North America R&D headquarters at low volumes to allow for flexibility, given the rapid rate of development of Toyota's autonomous test platforms. Some will be assembled using Toyota's Guardian dual-cockpit control layout to allow for transferring control between a human test driver and the automated system while keeping the driver as a backup, while the single-cockpit, fully autonomous Chauffeur mode will be shown at CES starting Jan. 9.Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Least favorite vehicles of 2017