Toyota enters a long winter

The auto industry is in a state of chill, and Toyota, the world's top-selling carmaker, is also shivering. In the Chinese market, the Prado, its last model that can still be sold at a premium, has also begun to reduce its price.

It’s not that Prado can’t hold on, but that the entire Toyota can’t hold on.

Recently, Toyota released its full-year sales data for 2024 - 800,199 units. It seems that Toyota is one of the few joint venture brands that still maintains positive growth, but if you lift the gorgeous robe of "positive growth", Toyota has actually stood on the edge of a cliff in China.

In 2022, Toyota's sales in the Chinese market fell for the first time. In the first ten months of 2024, its performance was even worse than the same period in 2023. It's completely like Wang Xiaoer celebrating the New Year.jpg.

Perhaps having already seen Toyota's decline, Dong Xiuhui, known as "Dong the Millionaire" at FAW, decisively lowered the sales target to 800,000 vehicles in the middle of the year. The purpose was to relieve pressure on dealers and prevent a sudden collapse in the coming year.

In fact, despite taking pressure-relief measures in advance, if it hadn't been for the sudden explosion in the last two months, which resulted in sales figures almost the same as in 2023, it would have been difficult to achieve even this lowered target.

The situation at GAC Toyota in the south is even more severe.

In the first half of 2024, Guangfeng sold 336,000 new vehicles, a sharp drop of 25.8% year-on-year. This downward trend has not been alleviated until the end of 2024.

The current Chinese automobile market has already undergone structural changes. BYD, NIO, Xpeng and other automakers have quickly occupied more than half of the market share with their advanced technology, rich product lines and highly competitive prices. This is undoubtedly a huge pressure for Toyota, which has been relatively "sluggish" in the field of new energy. Now Toyota may be unable to stop the bleeding.

What’s more crucial is that for Toyota, such a harsh winter does not only exist in the Chinese market.

At the end of last year, Toyota announced that its global production in November 2024, including its subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor and Hino Motors, was 966,921 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 9.4%; global sales were 984,348 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 0.2%.

Toyota has said that its global production has fallen for eight consecutive months, mainly due to poor sales in the U.S. and China. For example, in September last year, production in the U.S. fell by 14%, while production in China fell by nearly 20%, reaching 19%.

What does the global cold reception mean for Toyota?

Toyota's financial report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025 (covering July to September 2024) pointed out that Toyota's global sales fell 4% year-on-year during this period, with cumulative sales of 4.556 million vehicles. Although net sales were basically the same as the same period last year, net profit fell sharply by 55% to only 573.77 billion yen. At the same time, operating profit also decreased by 20% to 1.16 trillion yen.

Simply put, Toyota's global sales are declining, production capacity is declining, and profits are declining.

Toyota has been in the automotive industry for decades and is considered the "king of the era" in the fuel era. Its brand influence is unquestionable. However, the trend of the automotive industry has changed. It is no longer feasible to rely on the dividends of the fuel era to make a living.

In the past decade, the global automobile market has experienced a period of rapid growth, and the number of cars in use has continued to rise. As the market gradually matures and the saturation of the automobile market reaches a high level, the growth in consumer demand for new cars will naturally slow down.

Under this general background, the sales growth space of each company will be limited to a certain extent. At this time, if you want to achieve stable growth, you have to compete with products, technology, services, and reputation. Toyota is not doing very well in these aspects.

In the new energy era, electrification transformation has become inevitable, both for the Chinese market and the global market. Although Toyota has a deep accumulation in hybrid technology, its development in the field of pure electric vehicles is relatively lagging behind. At least so far, we have not seen any unique new energy products or technologies from Toyota.

Toyota Motor Chairman Akio Toyoda has even expressed concerns about the speed of the transition to electric vehicles, believing that a rapid shift to pure electric vehicles could lead to the unemployment of a large number of employees in engine-related fields.

Therefore, Toyota is more supportive of the development of pure electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and other "multi-path solutions" both in Japan and in the global market. For example, Akio Toyoda once said that the market share of pure electric vehicles can reach up to 30%, and the rest will be occupied by hybrid vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and fuel vehicles.

These attitudes mean that Toyota's transition to electric vehicles in the future will still not be as rapid as expected, and if it is not aggressive enough in electrification, it will undoubtedly lose the Chinese market that focuses on electrification and other global markets that are actively developing new energy vehicles.

In terms of brand reputation, Toyota did have many loyal fans in the past. However, in recent years, it has been caught up in a whirlpool of quality problems, involving the quality of key components such as the vehicle's airbags and brake systems, which directly led to the production and delivery of Toyota Grand Highlander and Lexus TX models in the US market.

In 2024, Toyota was again exposed for fraud in its vehicle certification applications, including submitting false pedestrian protection test data, using parts that were different from the specifications of mass-produced models, and rewriting test data.

In short, people's hearts don't turn cold overnight, and this is true for users in the Chinese market as well as users in the global market. Due to the accumulation of various factors, such as fraudulent operations, quality problems, and slow development, Toyota's influence in the global market is no longer as strong as it used to be.

Judging from the fact that Toyota adjusted its global sales forecast for 2024 from 10.95 million vehicles to 10.85 million vehicles, Toyota is actually well aware of the severe situation it faces.

The spring of the global automobile market will not come soon. For Toyota, the weak Chinese market is just the tip of the iceberg. The bigger problem is that its products and technologies are not advanced enough, and its service and quality have damaged its reputation. If it does not improve soon, it is not alarmist that Toyota will collapse in the long winter. Don’t you see that Nissan and Honda have already joined forces to keep each other warm?