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Toyota Will Not Build Cheap Cars: CEO
Toyota Motors CEO Akio Toyoda has said: “Toyota Motor has no intention of offering ultra-cheap cars to boost sales in emerging markets and will keep its focus on customers who expect a certain level of reliability.”
Toyota is the second carmaker to respond to Nissan launching Datsun. Earlier Volkswagen had hinted that it too wanted to launch a low cost car brand to achieve high sales in emerging markets. Toyota which has built its brand image on the promise of quality and reliability cannot take the risk of building low cost cars which obviously cannot have the same levels of build quality.
Toyota has already taken a huge beating in its core markets of Japan and USA due to quality issues in the past three years. Having been forced to recall millions of cars despite its high production values, Toyota has become very careful when it comes to quality.
Mr Akio Toyoda also referred to Indian carmaker Tata Motors while presenting his opinions. He said Toyota Motors had to make a profit on whatever car it builds and added it did not have the ability to build cars cheaper than 500,000 yen ($6,000) dollars like Tata Motors.
Toyota has not entirely kept itself away from the low cast car market. Its Etios and Etios Liva cars are the Japanese carmaker's first models priced lower than Rs.4 lakhs in India. But it has not posed a serious challenge to market leader Maruti Suzuki so far.
Mr Akio Toyoda also said Toyota will focus on the middle class and higher class where it has been a sizable player. However he also added that Toyota was no longer aiming at sales supremacy in the world and would focus only on quality products.
Toyota had briefly overtaken General Motors to become the world's leading carmaker by sales before the recalls and the tsunami in Japan severely affected its sales.
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