(By Salman - iStockAnalyst Writer)
Toyota Motor Corporation operates in the automotive industry worldwide. It engages in the design, manufacture, assembly, and sale of passenger cars, minivans, and trucks and related parts and accessories.
Toyota Camry, the best-selling passenger car in the United States sold 436,000 units in 2008.
The Japanese automaker became the world's top automaker in terms of sales in 2008, surpassing GM by selling 8.97 million vehicles. According to forecasting firm IHS Global Insight Toyota’s 2010 U.S. market share will edge out GM, which recently filed for bankruptcy. The firm projected Toyota’s 2010 market share at 17.6 percent and GM’s at 17.3 percent.
The company is well positioned to benefit from US automakers' woes. Already there are signs of relative stabilization in US auto market and consumers are beginning to return to showrooms. U.S. auto sales edged toward the 10 million mark in May, well above forecasts for the year. Though Toyota's North American May sales were off 38 percent compared to last year, sales were up 21 percent from April of this year. The company is quite encouraged by improving trend and executives now believe that the automaker may surpass its initial worldwide sales goal of 6.5 million units for this fiscal year. Toyota recently announced that it would add 65,000 vehicles to production schedules this summer, increasing output of Camry and Corolla sedans, Tundra and Tacoma trucks, and the Rav4 crossover.
The carmaker is betting heavily on its third-generation Prius, which it rolled out in May. Since Toyota pioneered their mass production with its first generation Prius in 1997, annual sales have reached some 1.8 million vehicles globally. The company expects to 180,000 units of Prius Hybrid in US in the first 12 months. Toyota’s outgoing President Katsuaki Watanabe even went on to term Prius a “savior” for the world’s largest automaker. It was Japan’s top-selling model in May. Already, the automaker has received 80,000 advance orders in its home market for the new model. The company plans to sell 10,000 of the new Prius in Japan a month. It has decided to boost production of its Prius hybrid from an initial plan of 42,000 to 43,000 units per month to around 50,000 units.
Apart from Prius,
Toyota Motor Corp expects to sell about 25,000 of its all-new dedicated hybrid car for the Lexus premium brand in the United States in the first 12 months of its sale. The Lexus HS250 hybrid, which is slated to go on sale in the U.S. later this summer, is the automaker's first hybrid-only model for the luxury division and adds to its green car lineup led by the market-leading Prius hybrid of the mass-market Toyota brand. Sales of hybrid cars is also expected to get a boost from tax credit offered by various governments.
