AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)08/29 Report--

According to several media reports, on the morning of August 29, local time, a total of 12 of Toyota's 14 vehicle plants in Japan were suspended due to suspected system failure, involving 25 production lines. A Toyota spokesman said 25 assembly lines at 12 plants had been shut down and parts orders could not be placed due to a failure in the production command system. The spokesman pointed out: "do not think that the system failure is caused by a cyber attack, it seems that the failure is limited to local factories in Japan." In addition, starting from the afternoon of the 29th, the shutdown will be extended to all 14 vehicle factories, with a total of 28 production lines.

The suspension of production at 14 vehicle plants means that a total of 28 production lines at all Toyota's plants in Japan will be suspended.

In response to the system failure, Toyota said on its website that the system failure was not caused by a cyber attack, but would continue to find out the detailed cause. However, Toyota did not say which models were affected, and it is not clear when it will resume work.

Or affected by the news, Toyota shares fell 0.7% in Tokyo trading. It is understood that Japanese factories account for about 1/3 of Toyota's annual output, and the shutdown of all factories in Japan will delay production of about 13000 vehicles a day, equivalent to 4 to 5 per cent of Toyota's monthly production capacity in Japan. In short, the suspension of all vehicle factories in Japan will undoubtedly have a significant impact on Toyota's next production and sales.

In fact, Toyota has also suffered frequent production cuts due to the epidemic and parts supply shortages and other factors, especially since March 2022, Toyota faces the problem of production stoppage and production reduction almost every month. Toyota's production situation has also fluctuated sharply in the process of successive shutdowns, which has directly led to a decline in Toyota's new car sales in the global market. At the end of February 2022, Toyota parts supplier Kojima stamping Industries suffered a cyber attack that paralyzed the parts supply system, and all Toyota's factories in Japan were shut down at one point, when it took Toyota several days to resume production. the failure also affected about 5% of production that month. In May, Toyota suspended 14 production lines for six days due to disruptions in overseas parts supplies. Toyota's domestic production in Japan fell 28% year-on-year in July 2022, while global production fell 8.6% year-on-year, according to the data. However, as of press time, it is not clear whether Toyota's plant shutdown in its home market in Japan is related to cyber attacks.

As a reference, Toyota's cumulative global sales for the whole year of 2022 fell 0.5% year on year to 9.567 million vehicles, leading Volkswagen Group and ranking first among global auto companies for three consecutive years. However, although Toyota retained the top spot in the world in 2022, it was a difficult year for Toyota, which was disrupted by a series of factors such as the epidemic and supply chain disruptions. this has led to a decline in Toyota's sales in many important 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.

According to the data, Toyota sold 4.9376 million vehicles worldwide in the first half of 2023, up 5.1 percent from the same period last year, and produced 4.8938 million vehicles, up 12.3 percent from the same period last year, the highest level since the first half of 2019. Toyota said sales and production in the first half of 2023 exceeded the same period a year earlier due to semiconductor supply problems and some relief by COVID-19. But Toyota's sales in China and the United States, the world's two largest car markets, fell in the first half of the year. Of this total, sales in the US market fell 0.7 per cent from a year earlier, slightly more than 1 million vehicles, while the Chinese market fell 2.8 per cent to 879400 vehicles.

Toyota already leads the world in terms of global sales in the first half of the year, but it is unclear whether Toyota has a chance to lead the world for the fourth year in a row under the impact of the shutdown.

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