Toyota slowing down large vehicle production
It's a lesson other automakers probably wish they'd learned a while ago: there's no point building big vehicles if no one wants to buy them. This realization has caused Toyota to cut back production in Japan of large vehicles like the HIghlander. The number of large vehicles built at the Toyota Motor Kyushu will be about 16 percent lower than last year, according to unsourced reports in the Nikkei (found in Automotive News Europe). Toyota had hoped to reduce production by just 10 percent, but made more cuts as the year wore on and sales in the U.S. and Europe didn't increase. This month, production lines were about 30 percent slower than usual, a trend that will likely continue until the end of the year. Toyota Motor Kyushu also makes large hybrids like the Kluger and Harrier, but those models were not mentioned in the ANE piece.
[Source: Automotive News Europe]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
radler63 3:13PM (8/30/2008)
Conversion possible?
Those big cars may be used as utility vehicle or minibus, if the production will be cheaper...
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TX CHL Instructor 3:40PM (8/30/2008)
Can you say, "Duh?"
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Peekoyle 12:17AM (8/31/2008)
Personally, I'd never buy a car called a "Kloogar" or "Klugga" or whatever the heck it is.
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gorr 10:24AM (8/31/2008)
It's not surprising. Exactly nothing have hit the market in green products since we talk abouth it. No battery car, no plug-in hybrid, no volt, no natural gas car or truck, no hydrogen fuelcell, no hydrogen internal combustion engine, no green algae fuel, no cellulosick ethanol from garbage. It's the desert in green technologies on the product side and on the blogosphere too. We the people are nothing and the hope admited here is battery car and there is not a single battery car on the market and all manufacturers says that they are not ready for battery and Gm and toyota were saying that hydrogen car were ready but were asking goverment to implement the hydrogen infrastructure and nearly all bloggers hate hydrogen technology.
If toyota start to schrink then imagine what is happening to the big three, they sink. All of this is because they don't push new technologies forward for real on the real market. They invest billions in hydrogen and battery researchs but don't collect anything for it except subsidies from goverment.
The solution is to begin green technology for real for the customer by installing a compressed natural gas tank with the car or truck and we can fuel the car or truck with gasoline-natural gas or hydrogen gas. It's finnally a cheap and efficient solution for now.
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