The first half of 2024 was a mixed blessing for Toyota, with good news and bad news coming one after another.
In the car market, which is half full of sea water and half of flame, any expectation will look pale.
As far as Toyota is concerned, there will be both high-profit moments and litigation-ridden accidents in the future.
What is the next step? It will be extremely difficult for this century-old store.
At the Toyota booth at the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, Toyota achieved record revenue in the 2023 fiscal year ended in March, according to Toyota’s first-quarter results.
Operating profit was 1.
1 trillion yen, up 93.
7% from the same period last year, exceeding market expectations of 880 billion yen.
net profit from home was 1.
3 trillion yen, up 78% from the same period last year.
and basic earnings per share was 96.
74 yen, compared with 53.
65 yen in the same period last year.
At the same time, sales have soared: its gas-electric hybrid accounted for nearly 40% of Toyota’s April sales.
Encouraged by increased cash flow and surging profits on non-electric models, Toyota moved half a step back towards an electric car.
On May 28th Toyota announced that it would develop a new hybrid engine in conjunction with Subaru, a subsidiary of Toyota, and Mazda.
In the press release, Toyota said that the goal is not only to improve the performance of the three engines, but also to combine the electric drive unit as the premise, and strive to achieve the best function of the engine and the electric drive unit in their respective areas of advantage.
Toyota said that the new engine jointly developed can achieve miniaturization while achieving high efficiency and high output, and change the overall layout of the car, and the new fuel vehicles in the future will further reduce the height of the front bonnet, improve design sense and aerodynamic performance, and improve fuel efficiency.
However, Toyota also responded to questions about its progress and retreat in the field of new energy: “the new engine will not use fossil fuels and will achieve carbon neutralization through diversified fuels such as e-fuel (synthetic fuels), biofuels and liquid hydrogen.
As a result, the new engine will also contribute to the popularization of carbon neutral fuel.
” Toyota President Henji Sato also said, “in order to provide consumers with a variety of choices to contribute to carbon neutralization, we will challenge new engines that meet the future energy environment and work with like-minded two companies to learn from each other.
” develop technology.
After analyzing the tripartite joint press conference, the media said that although Toyota added “using electronic fuels instead of traditional fossil fuels” in its campaign to jointly develop new engines, and “serving for more efficient cooperation with electric motors,” and so on, it still can’t hide its inner monologue that it is unwilling to devote itself to pure trams.
In fact, this miniscule style of three steps forward and two steps back has been reflected incisively and vividly in many Toyota product strategy releases in recent years.
If we open the Toyota platform, the on-the-spot principle is: only produce the right products at the right time and in the right place, this is Toyota’s DNA.
At that time, Toyota started as a textile workshop, to rely on bank loans to assemble Austin, and then to export to the United States in exchange for price, until it became popular all over the world to sit on the throne of cars.
It is no exaggeration to say that the pursuit of cash reserves and corporate security has been deeply buried under the cornerstone of the brand.
The temporary ebb of electric cars in Europe and the United States and the rise in sales of traditional energy vehicles also seem to validate Toyota’s conservative strategy.
In early June, though, Toyota shares were down 14% from their peak before March.
However, it still trades at more than 10 times forward earnings and is valued at nearly three times that of German rival Volkswagen.
It is also a world of difference with Tesla, who was once out of reach and now falls again and again.
In fiscal year 2024, Toyota said it would keep its previous forecast unchanged.
Revenue for the 2024 fiscal year is expected to grow 2.
3 per cent to 38 trillion yen and operating profit is expected to grow by 10.
1 per cent to Y3,000bn.
However, the trend of electric cars may slow down, but it will come too late.
The good days of traditional energy cars may be extended for a few years, but they are doomed to leave us.
Toyota, which has a history of nearly a hundred years, knows very well that the highlight moment of the market will not last forever, and the image of the good man will not always be innocent.
Toyota’s challenges often come from the evolution of the market and the impermanence of customers.
The scandal was frequently exposed under strong supervision, and on June 3, Toyota suffered a blow! Japan’s Ministry of Land and Transport said Toyota had submitted incorrect data in pedestrian safety tests on three existing models and had used modified cars for crash safety tests.
Toyota admitted that it had submitted inadequate passenger and pedestrian protection test data for some models, including Lexus, and announced a moratorium on shipments of three vehicles made in Japan.
It is worth noting that this is the third scandal that Toyota has been exposed in a strong regulatory environment in more than half a year.
In January, Toyota automatic looms (Toyota Industries Corp) suspended shipments of all engines after an investigation found that it had falsified power output data.
at the end of last year, its wholly owned subsidiary, Daihatsu, was found to have tampered with crash safety tests dating back to 1989.
And if we push back another year, Hino Motors, a Toyota subsidiary, said in 2022 that it had systematically falsified emissions data as early as 2003.
The last major global scandal in the auto industry was in 2014.
At that time, Toyota’s rival Volkswagen broke the emission door, that is, to install special equipment on the car in order to muddle through the official test.
The impact of the Volkswagen emission door can still be echoed in today’s European and American automobile markets and public opinion.
It may take several generations to build a perfect brand image, but it is often destroyed only overnight.
This may be a bad sign that Toyota must take warning from, after all, profits and sales can be temporary, and the damage to goodwill can burden a brand with a cross for decades.
Physics once derived an economic principle: enterprises from budding to steady decline is an inevitable cycle, just as objects affected by gravity are bound to go through a parabola from their initial velocity to their final landing.
Economics calls this parabola phenomenon of enterprise life cycle “entropy”.
The factors that accelerate its fall are called entropy increase, and the factors that delay its fall are called entropy decrease.
Toyota missed the electric carThere is a good opportunity for the development of industrial policies.
Excessive and premature bets on hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen energy power are affected by the high cost of green hydrogen and the difficulty of commercialization, and cannot be realized.
causing it to enter the lower part of the parabola.
The hot sales of hybrid vehicles and plans for electronic fuel engines can only change the slope of this curve from steep to gentle, strengthening its entropy reduction factor and long tail effect, but they cannot change the fact that the parabola is infinitely close to the bottom and gradually towards decline.
Therefore, it is not too late to adjust strategies in time, get on the track of electric vehicles, stop looking left and right, and go all out to promote solid-state batteries.
As a veteran who has observed Toyota Motor for 25 years, I hope that Toyota can truly focus on the Chinese market on the basis of ensuring profits and cash flow, and not easily withdraw its investment in the Chinese market and reduce its budget.
In turn, we will strengthen cooperation with Chinese industry-university-research institutions with practical actions, especially with BYD in vehicle research and development and with Xiaoma Zhixing in intelligent network connection technology.
Strengthen its competitiveness in the global electric vehicle market with trials in the Chinese market.
At the same time, we must be prepared for the success and failure of solid-state batteries.
Once we succeed, we will be able to emerge from the ashes and seize the city.
once we fail, we must make every effort to firmly secure the Chinese market and hold the market if we retreat.
In the 100-day countdown to the 2024 Paris Olympics, Toyota Motor released a video titled “See Off” on social media, officially launching the Paris Olympics cycle promotion campaign, and promised to put 3000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles outside the Olympics.
But Toyota also announced that plans for top Olympic sponsors will not be renewed.
Analysts pointed out that after experiencing the COVID-19 epidemic and the all-round impact of electric vehicles in China, Toyota can no longer spend lavishly, and cash is particularly important to Toyota today.
However, the window for competitors in the traditional energy vehicle market is getting narrower and narrower.
Without venture capital and all-out bets, Toyota cannot maintain high profits for a long time.
In electric vehicles and smart driving, two fields related to future survival, money cannot be saved.
The happy sea bath will not last long, and the fiery flames of competition have long surrounded us.
Toyota, which is good at being down-to-earth, cannot give up its ideal of looking up at the stars.
Otherwise, no matter whether it is a scandal or the market, it will not leave a giant with too many opportunities to “reflect on it after it fails” and “make up for it after it has lost its sheep”! Who knows what crisis will be next? Return to First Electric Network Home>.
