The global chip shortage in the automotive industry is still here with no signs of slowing down. As a result, the crisis leads to many automakers having issues with vehicle production and Toyota is not immune to disruptions. The Japanese manufacturer now releases an official statement to announce it has to adjust its production estimations for this year.
Toyota states the spread of Covid-19 continues to cause “considerable inconvenience” to customers and disruptions in the production chain. The chip shortage forces the automaker to adjust its production plans for November when the company will produce around 800,000 vehicles, of which 250,000 will be built in Japan and about 550,000 in factories in North America, Europe, and other regions.
These numbers may still look impressive – imagine how big the imaginary parking lot that could fit all 800,000 vehicles would be – but Toyota says this is a decline over its initial forecast. The reduced production capacity for November will result in a lower annual production forecast of 9.7 million units. It’s important to note, however, that this forecast is for the fiscal year 2023 (FY2023).
“It remains difficult to look ahead due to the impact of semiconductor parts and other factors. However, we will continue to closely examine the supply of parts and work with related parties to consider all possible measures to ensure that we can deliver as many vehicles as possible to our customers at the earliest possible date,” Toyota says in the statement released to media representatives. We’ve also reached out to the automaker for more details and will update this story when (and if) we hear back.
Toyota also releases a list of suspensions of production in November at its Japanese plants. There will be production pauses at 8 plants and 11 production lines out of a total of 28 lines in 14 plants. The Toyota Auto Body Fujimatsu Plant will see the highest number of days without production activities, but this is the plant where the automaker builds just the JDM Noah and Voxy models.
