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Toyota travails: Lesson for Chinese carmakers
By Han Tianyang (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-08 10:35
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As auto icon battles to regain trust, insiders note nation's lax regulations
"Where there is a way for cars, there is a Toyota" said the Japanese carmaker's popular advertising slogan in China in the 1980s.
Yet the beleaguered auto giant is now facing a different path - finding a way to recover consumer trust after massive recalls around the world.
Due to faulty gas pedals, brakes and floor mats, the company has now recalled 8.5 million vehicles globally since October last year - including more than 75,500 RAV4 sports utility vehicles in China - due to potential accelerator problems.
Widespread doubts about the quality of Toyota cars have now been raised among Chinese consumers.
Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corp, admitted at a press conference in Beijing last week that the company's overly rapid expansion resulted in quality problems.
"The China market is very important to Toyota, so I decided to fly here directly from the US in person to deliver my expression of apology and explanation to Chinese consumers in the hope of regaining trust here," Toyoda said.
'Saftey should be first'
He added that in the past several years Toyota deviated from its original idea that safety should always come first and the cost of it should rank last.
Toyoda said the company will establish a special committee with several chief quality officers from Toyota's markets across the world to better hear consumer voices and respond quickly and appropriately. Toyoda himself will head the committee.
The committee plans to hold its first global meeting on March 30 to discuss the recent multiple recalls and the company's flawed quality management, Liu Peng, spokesman of Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co Ltd, told China Daily.
Concrete action plans will be discussed at the upcoming meeting and then publicly released, said Liu.
Despite negative impacts from the recall, the carmaker has kept its sales target at 800,000 vehicles in China this year.
Masahiro Kato, president of Toyota's China operation, said they even hope to surpass the goal as the Chinese market has such strong momentum.
Yet analysts believe that merely talking about sales aims is not enough and the company might reduce prices in a tradeoff to increase sales.
Zhang Xin, an auto analyst with Guotai Jun'an Securities, said it will be hard for Toyota to be profitable this year.
But he remains optimistic about the carmaker's future performance in China.
"If there are no new incidents, Toyota is likely to get through the trust crisis in China, at the soonest in six months," Zhang said.
He noted that automakers usually offer new models in the third quarter of the year and if Toyota's new cars have solved the safety problems and are priced reasonably, consumers will continue to buy the brand.
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"Toyota's market share in China is expected to decrease in 2010 and 2011, and climb back to about 7.5 percent in 2012," said Marvin Zhu, a senior market analyst at JD Power Consulting (Shanghai) Co Ltd.
According to Zhu, Toyota's RAV4 will take a hit in near-term sales but in six months will gradually return to its position as a principal model in the Chinese market, which has a strong demand for compact SUVs.
Toyota's China sales last year increased by 21 percent to 709,000 vehicles, far below the 52.9 percent growth in the overall passenger vehicle market.
Zhu said Toyota's overall sluggish performance in China should be mainly attributed to weakening competitiveness of its existing models - for example, its mainstream model Camry now faces more rivals in the compact car segment, like Nissan's Teana and Buick's LaCrosse.
JD Power predicts Toyota's sales this year will probably stay the same or see slight growth compared with last year.
