Tokyo, Japan - Toyota sold 10.23 million vehicles in 2014, outpacing General Motors and Volkswagen to remain the world's biggest automaker, but a shaky outlook for 2015 could see it lose the title to Wolfsburg.
The record worldwide annual sales figure beat VW, which logged sales of 10.14 million vehicles, and GM, which said it sold 9.92 million cars in 2014.
But Toyota also said sales would decline this year to an expected 10.15 million vehicles, as demand falls off in its home market.
That mean Toyota will probably lag behind Volkswagen in 2015 as the German automaker rides momentum in emerging economies that could see it take the lead in global auto sales for the first time.
Toyota broke GM's decades-long reign as the world's top automaker in 2008 but lost the crown three years later as Japan's earthquake-tsunami disaster hammered production and disrupted the supply chains of the country's carmakers. However, in 2012 it once again overtook GM.
Toyota's upbeat announcement on Wednesday comes despite the firm struggling to recover its reputation for safety after the recall of millions of cars around the world for various problems, including an exploding air bag crisis at supplier Takata.
EMPHASISING QUALITY OVER VOLUME
But it earlier warned over a downturn in key Asian markets including Indonesia and Thailand, which has been hammered by political unrest, and there are also growing fears about the entire industry's prospects in China owing to concerns about the health of the world's No.2 economy.
Toyota put a hold on building new plants for the three years until early 2016, and a Toyota executive at the Detroit auto show said last week that the company was emphasising quality of sales rather than volume, pushing further into the fast-growing market for environmentally-friendly cars, especially in China where officials are struggling to contain an air pollution crisis.
Toyota said this month it had been swamped by domestic orders for its first mass market hydrogen fuel-cell car, with demand in the first month nearly four times higher than expected for the whole year.
The company received more than 1500 orders for its “Mirai” sedan since its launch in mid-December. It had planned to sell 400 in Japan over 12 months.
It also announced plans to develop components for hybrid vehicles with two Chinese automakers in an unprecedented technology-sharing deal aimed at increasing green car sales in the world's biggest vehicle market.
AFP