Toyota Motor Corp. sees its sales growth in China slowing next year, but believes that a more-focused strategy, including more models with smaller engines, will help it outperform rivals after its results trailed the overall market this year, an executive at the Japanese company said.
Toyota expects its China sales to grow 14% to 800,000 vehicles in 2010, Shoju Nozaki, a senior Toyota sales executive in China, said on the sidelines of the Guangzhou auto show that began this week. Toyota is forecasting sales of about 700,000 this year, up 20% from the 585,000 it sold here in 2008, he said.
This year has been challenging for Toyota in China, which is on pace to surpass the U.S. as the biggest car market for all of 2009.
While 20% growth would be outstanding in most markets, it is slow compared to that of automakers including General Motors Co., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. and Hyundai Motor Co. Overall vehicle sales in China in the first 10 months of 2009 rose nearly 38% from last year.
If Toyota, the world's biggest car maker by sales, meets its outlook for 2010 it would be well ahead of the pace analysts are expecting for overall industry growth. J.D. Power & Associates, for instance, forecasts a 4.6% rise in sales of passenger vehicles in China and a 3.3% decline for light commercial vehicles.
Yale Zhang, a Shanghai-based analyst with U.S. consulting firm CSM Worldwide, thinks Toyota's goal to increase sales by 14% next year is achievable.
"They were stuck in neutral for a good part of the year this year and have had plenty of time to make adjustments to focus more on cars with smaller engines, so most of the structural problems they faced earlier this year are gone," Zhang said.
Toyota's sales in China actually contracted in the first four months of this year, before starting to turn around in May as the company responded, belatedly, to surging demand for cars with smaller engines.
Next year, Toyota is aiming for part of its boost to come from a similar adaptation by its Lexus unit. The luxury segment was one of the few areas of China's car market to experience unspectacular demand this year, averaging 14% growth through September. Nozaki said he expects Lexus sales in China to total about 33,000 vehicles this year, compared with 32,150 in 2008.
Relatively weak sales growth of upscale cars like Lexus was due in part to slower growth in China's export-dependent coastal regions, which were hit by the global downturn, meaning people couldn't afford pricey vehicles.
But a bigger reason was the Chinese government's decision last year to promote fuel savings by raising sales taxes for vehicles with engines bigger than three liters.
Nozaki, who is based in Beijing for Toyota, said Lexus should have moved more quickly to offer models with smaller engines.
"The sales tax change hit us substantially," he said. Through October, Toyota had 7.8% of China's passenger-car market, down from 10.3% in 2008, according to J.D. Power.
Nozaki said Lexus would introduce more China-specific cars, such as the ES240, which Toyota launched in September. The car has a sub-three-liter engine that qualifies for a lower tax bracket. He said Toyota expects Lexus sales to rebound in 2010, rising about 30% to 43,000 vehicles.
"The most important take-away from late last year and the start of this year when sales struggled is...we need to respond more quickly to policy change," Nozaki said. "We lacked cars with smaller engines just when we needed them the most." Having more China-focused cars with smaller engines "is what we are going to focus on going forward," he said. "That is the main pillar of our new strategy in China."
(Source: http://irco.biz)
No comments:
Post a Comment