The Toyota cars

This article is about the Japanese car manufacturer. For other uses, see Toyota (disambiguation).

The Toyota Motor Corporation (Japanese: トヨタ自動車株式会社, Hepburn: Toyota Jidōsha KK, IPA: [toꜜjota], English: /tɔɪˈoʊtə/, commonly known as Toyota) is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on August 28, 1937. In 2017, Toyota's corporate structure consisted of 364,445 employees worldwide[4] and, as of December 2019, was the tenth-largest company in the world by revenue. Toyota is the largest automobile manufacturer in the world followed by Volkswagen, based on 2020 unit sales.[5][6] Toyota was the world's first automobile manufacturer to produce more than 10 million vehicles per year, which it has done since 2012, when it also reported the production of its 200 millionth vehicle.[7] As of July 2014, Toyota was the largest listed company in Japan by market capitalization (worth more than twice as much as number 2-ranked SoftBank)[8] and by revenue.[9][10]

Toyota is the global market leader in sales of hybrid electric vehicles, and one of the largest companies to encourage the mass-market adoption of hybrid vehicles across the globe. Toyota is also a market leader in hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Cumulative global sales of Toyota and Lexus hybrid passenger car models achieved the 15 million milestone in January 2020.[11] Its Prius family is the world's top-selling hybrid nameplate with over 6 million units sold worldwide as of January 2017.[12]

The company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937, as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries, to manufacture automobiles. Three years earlier, in 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it developed its first product, the Type A engine, and its first passenger car in 1936, the Toyota AA. Toyota Motor Corporation produces vehicles under five brands, including the Toyota brand, Hino, Lexus, Ranz, and Daihatsu. It also holds a 20.02% stake[13] in Subaru Corporation, a 5.1% stake in Mazda,[14] a 4.9% stake in Suzuki,[15] a 4.6% stake in Isuzu, a 3.8% stake in Yamaha Motor Corporation, and a 2.8% stake in Panasonic, as well as joint-ventures with two in China (GAC Toyota and Sichuan FAW Toyota Motor), one in India (Toyota Kirloskar), one in the Czech Republic (TPCA), one in the United States (MTMUS), along with several "nonautomotive" companies.[16] TMC is part of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.[17]

Toyota is listed on the London Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange and Tokyo Stock Exchange.

History

Main article: History of Toyota

1920s–1930s

The mass-produced Toyoda automated loom, displayed at Toyota Museum in Aichi-gun, Japan

In 1924, Sakichi Toyoda invented the Toyoda Model G Automatic Loom. The principle of jidoka, which means the machine stops itself when a problem occurs, became later a part of the Toyota Production System. Looms were built on a small production line. In 1929, the patent for the automatic loom was sold to the British company Platt Brothers,[26] generating the starting capital for automobile development.[27]

Toyoda Standard Sedan AA 1936

The production of Toyota automobiles was started in 1933 as a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works devoted to the production of automobiles under the direction of the founder's son, Kiichiro Toyoda.[28] Its first vehicles were the A1 passenger car and the G1 truck in 1935. The Toyota Motor Company was established as an independent company in 1937. Vehicles were originally sold under the name "Toyoda" (トヨダ), from the family name of the company's founder, Kiichirō Toyoda. In April 1936, Toyoda's first passenger car, the Model AA, was completed. The sales price was 3,350 yen, 400 yen cheaper than Ford or GM cars.[29]

In September 1936, the company ran a public competition to design a new logo. Of 27,000 entries, the winning entry was the three Japanese katakana letters for "Toyoda" in a circle. However, Rizaburo Toyoda, who had married into the family and was not born with that name, preferred "Toyota" (トヨタ) because it took eight brush strokes (a lucky number) to write in Japanese, was visually simpler (leaving off the diacritic at the end), and with a voiceless consonant instead of a voiced one (voiced consonants are considered to have a "murky" or "muddy" sound compared to voiceless consonants, which are "clear").

Since toyoda literally means "fertile rice paddies", changing the name also prevented the company from being associated with old-fashioned farming. The newly formed word was trademarked and the company was registered in August 1937 as the Toyota Motor Company.[30][31][32]

The Japanese government supported the company by preventing foreign competitors Ford and General Motors from importing automobiles into Japan.[33]

1940s–1950s

First-generation Toyopet Crown Model RSD (1955/1 – 1958/10)

From September 1947, Toyota's small-sized vehicles were sold under the name "Toyopet" (トヨペット).[34] The first vehicle sold under this name was the Toyopet SA,[35] but it also included vehicles such as the Toyopet SB light truck, Toyopet Stout light truck,[36] Toyopet Crown, Toyopet Master, and the Toyopet Corona. The word "Toyopet" (Japanese article) was a nickname given to the Toyota SA due to its small size, as the result of a naming contest the Toyota Company organized in 1947. However, when Toyota eventually entered the American market in 1957 with the Crown, the name was not well received due to connotations of toys and pets.[37] The car was withdrawn from the American market in 1958,[38] but continued in other markets until the mid-1960s.

The company continued to be supported by the state. In 1949 the Bank of Japan, the central bank of the country, bailed out the company.[39] The name "Toyopet" is still used in Japan by a dealership network called the "Toyopet Store"

1960s–1970s

By the early 1960s, the US had begun placing stiff import tariffs on certain vehicles. The so-called "chicken tax" of 1964 placed a 25% tax on imported light trucks.[40] In response to the tariff, Toyota, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. began building plants in the US by the early 1980s.[40]

1980s

By the 1980s Toyota Corolla was one of the most popular and best selling cars in the world

Toyota received its first Japanese Quality Control Award at the start of the 1980s and began participating in a wide variety of motorsports. Due to the 1973 oil crisis, consumers in the lucrative US market began turning to making small cars with better fuel economy. American car manufacturers had considered small economy cars to be an entry-level product, and their small vehicles employed a low level of quality to keep the price low. Conservative Toyota held on to rear-wheel-drive designs for longer than most; while a clear first in overall production they were only third in production of front-wheel-drive cars in 1983, behind Nissan and Honda. In part due to this, Nissan's Sunny managed to squeeze by the Corolla in numbers built that year.[41]

In 1982, the Toyota Motor Company and Toyota Motor Sales merged into one company, the Toyota Motor Corporation. Two years later, Toyota entered into a joint venture with General Motors called the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc, NUMMI, operating an automobile-manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. The factory was the old General Motors Fremont Assembly plant that had been closed for two years. It is currently the site of Tesla, Inc.'s assembly plant. Toyota then started to establish new brands at the end of the 1980s, with the launch of their luxury division Lexus in 1989.

1990s

Toyota Supra (JZA80) is one of the most recognized Japanese sports cars

In the 1990s, Toyota began to branch out from producing mostly compact cars by adding many larger and more luxurious vehicles to its lineup, including a full-sized pickup, the T100 (and later the Tundra), several lines of SUVs, a sport version of the Camry, known as the Camry Solara. They would also launch newer iterations of their sports cars, namely the MR2, Celica, and Supra during this era.

With a major presence in Europe, due to the success of Toyota Team Europe, the corporation decided to set up Toyota Motor Europe Marketing and Engineering, TMME, to help market vehicles in the continent. Two years later, Toyota set up a base in the United Kingdom, TMUK, as the company's cars had become very popular among British drivers. Bases in Indiana, Virginia, and Tianjin were also set up. On September 29, 1999, the company decided to list itself on the New York and London Stock Exchanges.

2000s

In 2001, Toyota's Toyo Trust and Banking merged with two other banks to form UFJ Bank, which was accused of corruption by Japan's government for making bad loans to alleged Yakuza crime syndicates with executives accused of blocking Financial Service Agency inspections.[42] The UFJ was listed among Fortune Magazine's largest money-losing corporations in the world, with Toyota's chairman serving as a director.[43] At the time, the UFJ was one of the largest shareholders of Toyota. As a result of Japan's banking crisis, UFJ merged with the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi to become the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

In 2002, Toyota entered Formula One competition and established joint ventures with French motoring companies Citroën and Peugeot a year after Toyota started producing cars in France.

A youth-oriented marque for North America, Scion, was introduced in 2003.

Toyota ranked eighth on Forbes 2000 list of the world's leading companies for the year 2005[44] but slid to 55th for 2011.[45] The company was number one in global automobile sales for the first quarter of 2008.[46]

In 2007, Toyota released an update of its full-sized truck, the Tundra, produced in two American factories, one in Texas and one in Indiana. Motor Trend named the Tundra "Truck of the Year", and the 2007 Toyota Camry "Car of the Year" for 2007. It also began the construction of two new factories, one to build the RAV4 in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada, and the other to build the Toyota Prius in Blue Springs, Mississippi, USA. This plant was originally intended to build the Toyota Highlander, but Toyota decided to use the plant in Princeton, Indiana, USA, instead. The company has also found recent success with its smaller models—the Corolla and Yaris.

2010s

In 2011, Toyota, along with large parts of the Japanese automotive industry, suffered from a series of natural disasters. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami led to a severe disruption of the supplier base and a drop in production and exports.[47][48] Severe flooding during the 2011 monsoon season in Thailand affected Japanese automakers that had chosen Thailand as a production base. Toyota is estimated to have lost production of 150,000 units to the tsunami and production of 240,000 units to the floods.

On February 10, 2014, it was announced that Toyota would cease manufacturing vehicles and engines in Australia by the end of 2017.[49][50] The decision was based on the unfavourable Australian dollar making exports not viable, the high cost of local manufacture and the high amount of competition in a relatively small local market.[50] The company plans to consolidate its corporate functions in Melbourne by the end of 2017. The head office will remain in Port Melbourne and the Altona plant will be retained for other functions. The workforce is expected to be reduced from 3,900 to 1,300.[51] Both Ford Motor Company and General Motors (Holden) followed suit, ending Australian production in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

The automaker narrowly topped global sales for the first half of 2014, selling 5.1 million vehicles in the six months ending June 30, 2014, an increase of 3.8% on the same period the previous year. Volkswagen AG, which recorded sales of 5.07 million vehicles, was close behind.[52]

In August 2014, Toyota announced it would be cutting its spare-parts prices in China by up to 35%. The company admitted the move was in response to a probe foreshadowed earlier in the month by China's National Development and Reform Commission of Toyota's Lexus spare-parts policies, as part of an industry-wide investigation into what the Chinese regulator considers exorbitantly high prices being charged by automakers for spare parts and after-sales servicing.[53]

In November 2015, the company announced that it would invest US$1 billion over the next 5 years into artificial intelligence and robotics research.[54] In 2016, Toyota invested in Uber.[55] In 2020, a corporate governance report showed that Toyota owns 10.25 million shares of Uber, which was valued at $292.46 million as of March 30, 2020. According to Reuters, this was roughly 0.6 per cent of Uber's outstanding shares.[56]

In March 2016, Toyota partnered with Yanmar to create a fiberglass pleasure boat using Yanmar outboard marine diesel engines or Toyota inboard engines.[57]

On August 27, 2018, Toyota announced an investment of US$500 million in Uber's autonomous cars.[58]

2020s

In March 2021, Toyota, its subsidiary Hino, and Isuzu announced the creation of a strategic partnership between the three companies. Toyota acquired a 4.6% stake in Isuzu while the latter plans to acquire Toyota shares for an equivalent value. The three companies said they would form a new joint venture by April called Commercial Japan Partnership Technologies Corporation with the aim of developing fuel cell and electric light trucks. Toyota would own an 80% stake in the venture while Hino and Isuzu would own 10% each.[59]

In April 2021, Toyota said that it will buy Lyft for $550 million as a plan to improve the self-driving technology.[60