Toyota edges past 9.1 million vehicle output goal, warns chip shortage lingering

TOKYO — Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp set a global annual output record in the business year ended in March, just edging past its target of 9.1 million vehicles as factory disruption from global chip supply woes and pandemic lockdowns eased.

But the world’s biggest automaker by sales warned it continued to see impacts from the long-running global chip shortage, saying it remained hard to predict its effect going forward.

Toyota said on Thursday it produced 9.13 million vehicles in the 12 months through March 31, a fraction ahead of its target, though that goal was downgraded twice from an initial goal for the year of around 9.7 million amid industry disruption.

In the previous year vehicle output was 8.57 million.

Global sales for the 12 months ended March rose to 9.61 million vehicles from 9.51 million in the prior year, setting another annual record for the company.

The company didn’t release new sales or production targets for the current business year that started in April.

It disclosed it has so far sold just 17,473 battery electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide, including those of its luxury Lexus brand, for the first three months of 2023.

That compared with 24,466 battery EVs sold by Toyota worldwide for the whole of 2022.