Toyota has cut its annual production target from nine million vehicles to 8.5 million due to the current worldwide shortage in computer chips.
Released this week, the firm’s results for Q4 2021 showed that its operating income for the period was JPY784.3bn (€638.8m), down from JPY987.9bn in Q3 2020.
In a statement accompanying the results, it said: “Although we continued to challenge ourselves with a high production plan to meet strong demand, we reduced the production volume forecast by 500 thousand units as compared to our previous forecast in the fourth quarter, due to the production operation instability we are facing. However, the new production plan is still at a high level.”
Elsewhere, it added: “However, the new production plan is still at a high level (the retail vehicle sales volume forecast unchanged and the consolidated vehicles sales volume forecast was revised downward by 300,000 units).”
Europe acts
The news comes the same week that the European Commission laid out its plans for the European Chips Act, which it said will bolster “competitiveness, resilience and help achieve both the digital and green transition”.
The act will reportedly mobilise more than €43bn of public and private investment to set measures that will “prevent, prepare, anticipate and swiftly respond to any future supply chains disruption”. It will have the target of doubling current market share to 20% within the next eight years.
One of its main components will be the €11bn ‘Chips for Europe’ Initiative that will pool resources across the EU states and private sector.
Also included will be a new framework around security of supply and a coordination mechanism between Member States and the European Commission to monitor the supply and demand for semiconductors.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said: “The European Chips Act will be a game changer for the global competitiveness of Europe’s single market. In the short term, it will increase our resilience to future crises, by enabling us to anticipate and avoid supply chain disruptions. And in the mid-term, it will help make Europe an industrial leader in this strategic branch. With the European Chips Act, we are putting out the investments and the strategy. But the key to our success lies in Europe’s innovators, our world-class researchers, in the people who have made our continent prosper through the decades.”
