Toyota chief calls for once-in-a-century shakeup to revive industry

Saturday 03rd October, 06:09 AM JST

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6 Comments

isthistheend at 08:49 AM JST - 3rd October

Nicely said......after the fact. "Whether we sell 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 or" they were going to greedily after being World No. 1 under Watanabe. I've always thought that the Lexus series (which obviously is affected by the slowdown) was poorly timed (by at least a decade), and going after the truck market in the U.S. (the very symbol of Ford) was pure greed. Now they closed the San Antonio factory after only 3 years running. But this type of hindsight exists for all of us, big or small.
Tahoochi at 11:05 AM JST - 3rd October

isthistheend: True, it's all "water under the bridge", and we'll see how Toyota handles all of their problems, but I really believe that their immediate, and top priority is how to handle this potential 3.8 mil. vehicle (or maybe just floor mat) recall issue. They've got to come up with measures that will satisfy the people who have filed complaints, AND all other customers who haven't experienced this problem.

isthistheend: As far as I know, their San Antonio plant is up and running. They went through a shutdown period of a few months, but their still in business.
solarbuster at 06:13 AM JST - 4th October

If they are real about serving customers they can be the first to bring in a "Lemon" replacement policy. This should not be a problem for Toyota as they don't seem to sell many "Lemons" but would be a good selling point for them.
dwjohnst at 12:37 PM JST - 4th October

I understand that the Toyota recall is not to fix the floormats so they work as in all other brands, but instead to ask each customer to throw away their driver floor mat. That's not a recall that requires Toyota to solve the floormat design flaw, but instead it causes the customer to lose a feature that they paid, for without a replacement. This is not customer first...
PepinGalarga at 12:58 PM JST - 4th October

He didn't mention anything about layoffs, restructuring, reducing models from the lineup or closing factories.

Once-in-a-lifetime shakeup would take a lot more than just introducing alternative energy vehicles or surviving a recall.

Toyota has benefited greatly from the government subsidies, and was even the top beneficiary of Obama's cash for Clunkers program, but they didn't really use any of that to regroup and restructure. As a result they may not be able to answer the challenge from revitalized car companies in the US, Europe and now China.

Not having direct access to technology for engines, transmissions and exhaust systems (and not spending any money on real R&D) prevented China from getting a foothold in major markets, but transactions such as the sale of the Hummer line to a Chinese SOE may give them a chance to reverse engineer all that technology and start mass production in a scale no one has ever seen.
societymike at 11:33 AM JST - 6th October

I can't believe they are still calling this issue a problem with the "floormats". The FACT remains that it's the gas pedal design flaw that makes this issue so deadly. There have been multiple cases where the car accelerates out of control when the "floor mat" gets wedged under the gas pedal. The car is "drive by wire" meaning the computer controls speed, not a wire going to the engine. Even though it's a problem with people panicking when this happens, they do not realize they can simply put the car in neutral, or hold the "PUSH START/STOP" button for 3 seconds to turn off the car. Instead, they panic and let the car accelerate out of control until they crash. There should be no way a floor mat should cause this problem, the pedal itself needs to be redesigned, not the floor mats.