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Toyota is cutting global car production by 40% in September due to the shortage of microprocessors.
The world’s biggest carmaker said it will be built 540,000 vehicles next month compared to its original 900,000 target. But the company is maintaining its full year global production targets.
Toyota has dealt better with the chief crisis than other carmakers. It had built up a stockpile of chips in a risk management programme introduced after the 2011 earthquake in Japan and Fukushima nuclear disaster.
In a Reuters report executive Kazunari Kumakura said: “The 9.3 million global production plan considers certain risks. We want to achieve the numbers.”
In Japan Toyota has suspended production in Japan in 14 out of 27 lines in 14 plants because of parts shortages resulting from the spread of the pandemic in southeast Asia.
In the UK the picture is mixed for brands. The latest car sales figures from the SMMT showed car registrations for July falling -29.5% to 123,296 units.
Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said: “The automotive sector continues to battle against shortages of semiconductors and staff. The semiconductor shortage is likely to remain an issue until at least the rest of the year.”
The latest SMMT outlook has been revised downward and now forecasts registrations to reach around 1.82 million units in 2021.
This is still some 11.7% up on 2020, but down from the 1.86 million forecasts in April, and down around -21.8% on the average new car market recorded over the past decade.