Toyota To Target Tripling China Production Over Next Decade

By Nao Sano, Kae Inoue and Kevin BucklandBloomberg

Toyota Motor Corp. is aiming to triple car production in China as soon as 2030 in a renewed push to make up lost ground in the world’s biggest market, sources said.

Asia’s largest automaker is targeting to manufacture 3.5 million vehicles annually in China around that year while boosting imports to the country to 500,000 vehicles, the sources said of the private internal goals. Toyota can currently produce 1.16 million cars in China annually, and sold 1.3 million there last year for a 4.5 percent market share. Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co. delivered more than 4 million each to China.

The foray comes as Chinese officials warm to the hybrid technology that Toyota pioneered with the Prius, amid a realization that electric vehicles alone probably won’t be able to achieve Beijing’s ambitious environmental targets. The government is aiming for a fifth of car sales by 2025 to be new-energy vehicles (NEV), which include pure EVs and plug-in hybrids. Stringent quotas for NEV production go into force next year.Toyota is working to correct its course in a market where VW, GM and local manufacturers, such as Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd., are strengthening their presence with lineups heavily featuring plug-in vehicles. Geely, controlled by billionaire Li Shufu, overtook all its Japanese rivals to became China’s third-biggest automaker by sales this year. By contrast, Toyota had to delay the introduction of a plug-in hybrid Corolla until next year, with an EV version of its compact crossover C-HR not due until 2020.

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