Toyota Motor Corp will rely more on emerging markets for sales and launch about 10 new hybrid models under a long-term strategy aimed at nearly doubling profits before 2015, its president said on Wednesday. The world's largest car maker, trying to move on from a massive global recall of vehicles a year ago, will cut its board to 11 members by June from the current 27 to speed up decision-making as part of the blueprint.
Outlining his "Global Vision", Toyota President Akio Toyoda said the company would also eliminate one layer of management, while giving each geographic region a bigger role to bring the automaker closer to its customers after a recall of nearly 20 million cars since 2009 dented its reputation for quality.
"From now we aim to build a strong base for generating profits ... so that even under tough conditions with the dollar averaging 85 yen and sales of 7.5 million units, we can book an operating margin of 5 percent and an operating profit of about 1 trillion yen," Toyoda said.
"This means that even if we are hit with a major economic downturn again and sales fall about 20 percent, we will still be able to post profits. This is the bottom line of our sustainable growth plan." Stefan Bratzel, head of the Centre for Automotive at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach said the plan marked an incremental improvement but no huge leap forward.
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