AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)02/13 Report--

On February 13, Toyota again announced a wave of major personnel changes.

Toyota announced on its website that from April 1, Yuki Nakajima will be the chief technology officer, and Yichi Miyazaki will be the chief financial officer, and the two will join the board along with the new chief brand officer, Simon Humphries. Toyota's three current vice presidents, Jian Kenta, Maeda Masahiko and Morita, will lead Toyota's Asian strategy and electrification businesses, respectively.

It is understood that Yuki Nakajima was born on April 10, 1962, graduated from the Graduate School of Engineering at Kyoto University in March 1987, and then joined Toyota.

From left to right are Shingoichi Miyazaki Yoichi Sato Yuki Nakajima and Simon Humphries respectively

In this latest personnel reshuffle, Toyota announced the appointments of senior executives and senior executives effective from March 1, 2023 and April 1, 2023, respectively, with the following changes:

On January 26th Toyota announced a major personnel change. Toyota announced that from April 1 this year, Akio Toyoda will step down as president, while appointing Toyota chief brand officer and Lexus brand head Eiji Sato to take over the new president. The reshuffle is the first time in 14 years that Toyota has ushered in a personnel change of its top official. Akio Toyoda, 66, the grandson of Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda, joined Toyota in 1984 and has been Toyota's president since June 2009.

On January 30th, Toyota released global sales data for 2022, which showed that Toyota's global sales in 2022 were 10.48 million vehicles, down 0.1% from a year earlier, its first year-on-year decline in two years, but still ahead of Volkswagen Group. Ranked first in global car sales for three consecutive years. However, while Toyota retained the top spot in the world, Toyota's production plans were disrupted by a series of factors such as the epidemic and supply chain disruptions this year, resulting in a decline in sales in a number of key markets around the world. Toyota's sales are on a year-on-year decline in 2022, including in Japan, the United States and China. Of these, sales in Japan's domestic market fell 12.66% year on year to 1.2891 million vehicles, its third consecutive year of decline; the US market fell 9.6% to 2.1085 million vehicles, lagging behind the 2.2741 million vehicles of the US giant General Motors; and the Chinese market is Toyota's first decline in nearly a decade, with cumulative sales of 1.9406 million vehicles, down 0.2% from the same period last year.

In the eyes of the outside world, no matter how Toyota's senior personnel change, what people are most concerned about is whether Toyota can stop the decline in sales after Toyota handed over operation management to Sato, the "external minister". Of course, whether Toyota can speed up the electrification process is also a top priority.

In response to the "slow electrification of Toyota" incident, Toyota president-elect Henoji Sato said at a news conference to announce the management change that Toyota would accelerate tram production by focusing on its Lexus luxury brand. But Toyota will not deviate from its long-standing strategy of exploring other technologies. Toyota believes that hybrid cars are of more practical significance to most drivers, so hydrogen-powered vehicles will be the future development direction of Toyota. It is understood that Toyota is the forerunner of hydrogen energy vehicles in Japan. At the end of 2014, Toyota launched the Mirai model, a mass-produced hydrogen energy car. At that time, the Japanese government subsidized bicycles as high as 100000 yuan, and then entered the US market the following year. It sold nearly 2000 vehicles in the United States in 2017, but has declined year by year since then. Industry insiders said: "hydrogen energy vehicles will either become the future of the automobile industry, or become a technological trap to eat up the Japanese auto industry."

Mr. Toyoda did not attend the management reshuffle press conference, but Mr. Sato reiterated Toyota's product planning goal of launching 30 electric vehicles by 2030, when pure electric car sales will reach 3.5 million. In addition, Toyota will release more details of the new electric vehicle platform launched in 2026 in April.

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