TOKYO – The world’s greatest automaker received larger in 2021 and by an even bigger margin.
Japanese juggernaut Toyota Motor Corp. clinched the world gross sales title once more final 12 months and expanded its lead over No. 2 Volkswagen Group by deftly dodging the worldwide semiconductor scarcity.
Toyota rocked the gross sales charts by chalking a ten.1 % improve in worldwide deliveries to 10.496 million autos for calendar 12 months 2021. International gross sales at Germany’s Volkswagen, against this, declined 4.5 % to eight.882 million autos in 2021 because the microchip disaster dented deliveries.
Toyota gained on rivals worldwide because it managed to keep away from prolonged manufacturing shutdowns by fastidiously managing microchip procurement and navigating provide chain bottlenecks. Toyota credited stockpiling early within the disaster and shut communication with suppliers for its edge.
The technique didn’t simply allow Toyota to widen the hole with Volkswagen on the worldwide stage.
It additionally propelled Toyota forward of American rival Basic Motors to clinch the U.S. gross sales crown in 2021. It was the primary time in 9 many years that GM didn’t prime the U.S. best-seller checklist.
In 2020, as world automakers struggled with COVID-19 disruption, Toyota had a narrower lead over VW. The Japanese firm’s world deliveries have been 9.528 million; VW’s have been 9.305 million.
In typical Toyota vogue, the corporate performed down the most recent world gross sales rating.
“Being primary has by no means been Toyota’s focus, and we see our gross sales efficiency because the collective results of every particular person buyer’s determination to help our manufacturers,” spokeswoman Shiori Hashimoto stated. “Our firm’s objective is to be one of the best model for security and high quality.”
Toyota slips
Tallies for Toyota and VW embrace heavy industrial vans, resembling quantity from Toyota’s Hino subsidiary and Volkswagen’s Man, Scania and Business Automobiles items. Strip these out, and the hole between the Japanese and German automakers widens as a result of VW sells extra vans.
Toyota’s sturdy outcomes for 2021, nonetheless, don’t essentially level to a rosy future.Toyota began the present fiscal 12 months focusing on world manufacturing of 9.3 million autos for the Toyota and Lexus manufacturers within the 12 months to March 31, because it recovered from the pandemic.
And the corporate largely confounded the trade by boosting output and notching document income regardless of the pandemic and the microchip broadside. However since final summer time, Toyota lastly started to really feel the pinch of the worldwide slowdown and joined rivals in pulling again output. This month, Toyota warned it could miss its revised fiscal-year manufacturing goal of 9 million items.
In calendar 12 months 2021, the Toyota-Lexus division produced 8.584 million autos, an 8.5 % improve over 2020, when factories and sellers have been hammered by pandemic lockdowns.
In gross sales, nonetheless, the Toyota Group’s outcome for the calendar 12 months 2021 was its third largest ever, trailing the document 10.742 million autos offered in 2019 and the ten.594 million moved in 2018. These figures embrace truck-maker Hino and minicar subsidiary Daihatsu.
VW nonetheless tops Toyota in EVs
Toyota and Lexus collectively chalked their second-highest quantity ever.
International deliveries for these manufacturers climbed 10.6 % to 9.615 million autos. That sum was exceeded solely by the document 9.714 million items the manufacturers offered in 2019. The Toyota model by itself noticed 2021 world gross sales improve to eight.855 million autos, from 7.973 million in 2020.
For comparability, Volkswagen-brand passenger automobiles notched 4.897 million in gross sales final 12 months, whereas Volkswagen Business Automobiles chipped in one other 359,900 autos.
Hybrid pioneer Toyota additionally offered a document variety of electrified autos in 2021 – to the tune of two.621 million items, together with hybrids, battery electrics and hydrogen gas cell autos.
However when it got here to pure electrical autos, there was no contest.
Volkswagen Group world deliveries of battery EVs almost doubled to 453,000 autos in 2021. Toyota noticed a four-fold improve in EV gross sales – however solely to a paltry 14,407 items.
Toyota is a late comer to the worldwide race for pure EVs because it continues to push gasoline-electric hybrids. Nevertheless it makes its first severe foray into the section with this 12 months’s launch of the bZ4X all-electric crossover. And Toyota plans a fast meet up with 30 absolutely electrical fashions by 2030.
In 2021, Toyota offered a document 2.482 million hybrid autos, a 30 % improve over 2020.
GM, the most important U.S.-based auto producer, hasn’t but reported world gross sales for 2021. However by September, it booked 4.812 million items. Since reducing again on abroad operations, the slimmed-down, post-bankruptcy GM has usually been out of competition for the worldwide No. 1 spot.