The Sunday Mail
TOYOTA Motor Corporation will build more sport-utility vehicles this year at factories in Japan and Canada to meet rising US demand, the carmaker’s top North American executive said.
Expanding output of models such as the Toyota RAV4 and Lexus RX will be a test of President Akio Toyoda’s plan to squeeze more vehicles out of existing factories before building new plants.
That strategy remains in place, said Jim Lentz, chief executive officer of Toyota’s North American operations.
“The freeze is still in place until the end of March of 2016,” Lentz said in an interview at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
“That hasn’t changed. All indications are that it will lift, but right now it has not lifted.”
Toyota will keep making more SUVs after its combined sales of such models climbed 16 percent last year to a record.
Even before petrol prices started their descent toward $2 a gallon, Americans were shifting from passenger cars and buying more SUVs, now built to offer relative roominess with little compromise on fuel economy.
Strong US sales, led by SUVs, have helped Toyota stay ahead of Volkswagen AG to remain the world’s largest automaker.
The VW brand sells just two SUVs in the country – the compact Tiguan and upscale Touareg – while Toyota fields five.
The Japanese automaker is now considering smaller SUVs for further growth, Lentz said.
“We’re going to have to look at how the market under RAV4 develops,” Lentz said.
“There’s no question that it’s going to. That’s going to be the next growth spurt.”
Lexus NX
Toyota can raise production of the RAV4 and RX in Japan and Canada this year, Lentz said. Lexus will also have its first full year of producing the smaller NX SUV, which outsold competing models from Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz last month in the US.
Toyota has the opportunity to sell 300 000 RAV4s annually in the US, although it may not cross that threshold this year, Bill Fay, a Toyota division group vice-president, said in an interview. The company delivered 267 698 RAV 4s in the US last year.
Lexus has already increased production of the NX beyond the original plan since the vehicle went on sale in the third quarter of last year, executive vice-president Mark Templin said in an interview.
“If it shows that it has more legs, then we’ll have to address it again,” he said, declining to give specific production figures.
Toyota hasn’t said whether fourth-quarter sales kept the company ahead of Volkswagen, which said this week it delivered more than 10 million vehicles for the first time in 2014.
The German carmaker trailed Toyota by about 72 000 vehicles in the first nine months of the year.
. . . Peugeot sales rise in China
PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG)’s deliveries rose for the first time in four years in 2014 as China overtook the automaker’s home country of France as its biggest market.
Sales increased 4,3 percent to 2,94 million cars and light commercial vehicles from 2,82 million a year earlier, boosted by demand for the 2008 and 3008 crossovers as well as the 308 hatchback, the Paris-based manufacturer said.
That’s still about 18 percent lower than in 2010, when Peugeot, Europe’s second-biggest carmaker, reported its last full-year growth with record sales of 3,6 million autos.
Chinese sales surged 32 percent.
“The figures look OK,” Sascha Gommel, a Frankfurt-based analyst at Commerzbank AG who recommends buying the shares, said by phone.
“It’s not so much the volume growth that’s important for Peugeot right now” as the company pushes to charge more for its cars. “The pricing improvement may play a much more important role.”
Peugeot, which may also post a full-year profit for the first time since 2011, has teamed up with Chinese manufacturer Dongfeng Motor Corporation to expand outside Europe, which accounted for about 60 percent of the company’s deliveries last year.
Peugeot is cutting costs by restructuring its Russian and Latin American operations, selling its scooter business and moving its headquarters from central Paris.
The stock has risen 20 percent in the past 12 months, valuing the carmaker at 8,52 billion euros ($10 billion).
The French manufacturer and Dongfeng have a target of selling 1,5 million vehicles annually in China by 2020.
Peugeot’s group sales in the country last year amounted to 734 100 vehicles, with the market accounting for 22 percent of the new DS brand’s global deliveries.
Demand in China was propelled by the Peugeot brand’s 2008 and 3008, the introduction of the 408 sedan and the Citroen marque’s C-Elysee sedan, the division’s best-selling model in the country.
“The Chinese clientele wants international brands,” Maxime Picat, head of the Peugeot brand, said on French radio station BFM on Wednesday.
“Consumers see them as offering modernity and a guarantee of quality, and that’s why these brands are growing strongly.”
Group sales in Europe rose 8 percent to 1,76 million vehicles, helped by the success of the Citroen C4 Cactus sport-utility vehicle and the Peugeot 308, which was named the European Car of the Year at the Geneva Motor Show in March.
Sales in France amounted to about 637 700 cars.
In contrast with gains in China and Europe, Peugeot’s sales plummeted 34 percent last year in Latin America to about 200 000 vehicles amid economic slowdowns in Argentina and Brazil.
In its Eurasia market, which includes Russia and Ukraine, Peugeot’s sales plunged 41 percent to 43 800 autos.
In Africa and the Middle East, the French manufacturer sold 25 percent fewer cars last year at about 169 400 vehicles. — Bloomberg.
