The Auto Blog .ru

For years Detroit automakers carped about the low value of the Japanese yen versus the U.S. dollar, but these days, the opposite is true. The yen has rocketed up in value versus the dollar, and Japan’s automakers are taking significant measures to mitigate its bottom-line-killing effects. In October Toyota demanded lower prices from its Japanese supply base, and now the Camry will be built in the U.S. and shipped overseas.

Toyota notes in the post-jump press release that it will build 6,000 Toyota Camry units in Georgetown, Kentucky and ship the units to Korea. The massive Georgetown plant employs nearly 7,000 employees working around the clock. This marks the first time Toyota will export the American-made Camry, yet Toyota isn’t new to U.S. exports. The automaker exports 100,000 vehicles built in the U.S. annually, shipping them to 19 countries.

The announcement is likely an exciting one for workers at the Georgetown plant, and Toyota feels more exports could be forthcoming. Toyota’s North America President, Yoshimi Inaba, states “we look forward to other opportunities to continue growing exports from our American operations.” Hit the jump to read over the press release.

Continue reading Kentucky-built Toyota Camry headed to South Korea

Kentucky-built Toyota Camry headed to South Korea

When does a mid-size sedan become a top-notch competitor to the Toyota Camry? The answer is apparently whenever said competitor begins stealing market share from America’s top-selling sedan.

Bloomberg reports that Toyota North America Chairman Yoshimi Inaba called the Hyundai Sonata “a very honorable contender in the market” during an interview earlier this week. Inaba adds that Toyota has great respect for the strong-selling Hyundai, and we’re guessing they’re not the only automaker keeping an ever closer eye on Camp Hyundai. Sales of the Sonata soared by 35 percent in 2010 to 196,623 units. Meanwhile, 2010 Camry sales dropped by 31 percent to 327,804 units. To make matters worse for Toyota and the Camry, supply disruptions stemming from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami have further hurt Camry sales while the Sonata continues to attract new buyers. In fact, the Sonata outsold the Camry in May, in part because of Toyota’s production issues.

But while the Sonata has been gaining on the Camry, that trend could reverse itself with an all-new Camry set to arrive later this year. Toyota President Akio Toyoda already told U.S. dealers in June that the new model will feature a more contemporary design, and we’re hearing rumblings of a hugely improved interior, as well.

Toyota NA chairman Inaba calls Hyundai Sonata “honorable contender” originally appeared on Autoblog 5.0 on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 10:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Toyota has decided to shift production of all non-hybrid Highlander crossovers for the North American market to its Princeton, Indiana assembly plant. The move is intended to help shield Toyota from fluctuating exchange rates. When Yoshimi Inaba took over as president and COO of Toyota North America a year ago, one of his stated aims was to increase North American production of Toyota and Lexus vehicle above the 60 percent level.

Toyota originally shifted production of the Highlander to Princeton after it consolidated production of its slow-selling Tundra pickups in San Antonio and the new Mississippi factory was put on hold. Because most of the hybrid powertrain components are supplied from Japanese factories, the gas-electric Highlanders will continue to be sourced from Toyota’s Kyushu factory. Production of non-hybrid Highlanders for North American export is expected to end in August.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub. Req.]

Toyota Highlander production being moved entirely to Indiana

It would seem that once was enough for Toyota North America President Yoshimi Inaba. Just weeks after the top Toyota executive went before a congressional hearing in the United States, The Globe and Mail is reporting that Inaba has turned down a similar invitation to appear before the Canadian government. The topic of conversation? Why, the massive Toyota recall efforts and safety, of course.

Officials for the Harper Administration in Canada are expressing a great deal of disappointment at the apparent snub, with Merv Tweed, the Conservative MP chairing the Toyota committee, going so far as to say that Inaba’s no-show would amount to a slight to the Canadian government and people, suggesting that Toyota perceives that the “American market is more important.”

The Canadian government reportedly plans to once again request that Inaba attend its hearings. If Toyota refuses the request, parliament could issue a subpoena to Inaba, though the Toyota executive neither lives nor works in Canada, meaning he could potentially avoid the summons by keeping out of the country entirely.

For its part, Toyota Canada claims it does not report to Inaba and they note that CEO Yoichi Tomihara and managing director Stephen Beatty will attend on behalf of the company.

[Source: The Globe and Mail]

Toyota’s top NA exec reportedly declines invite to appear before Canadian gov’t.

And the saga continues. According to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Ed Towns (D-N.Y.), documents obtained by the committee under subpoena from Dimitrios Biller – managing counsel in the product liability group of Toyota Motor Sales USA from April 2003 to September 2007 – “indicate Toyota deliberately withheld records that it was legally required to produce in response to discovery orders in litigation.”

Towns further says that many such documents “concern ‘rollover’ cases in which a driver or passenger was injured, including cases where victims were paralyzed.” In a letter sent to Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota’s operations in North America, Towns wrote:

In sum, the Biller documents indicate a systematic disregard for the law and routine violation of court discovery orders in litigation. People injured in crashes involving Toyota vehicles may have been injured a second time when Toyota failed to produce relevant evidence in court… Moreover, this also raises very serious questions as to whether Toyota has also withheld substantial, relevant information from NHTSA.

It has also come out that Toyota keeps so-called “Books of Knowledge” containing information from Toyota engineers on internal design and testing data. So closely held was this information that the automaker supposedly agreed to multimillion-dollar civic settlements to safeguard the data. Serious charges indeed, and Towns has given Toyota until Friday, March 12th, to respond.

Tired of Toyota recall news? Try out the recall-free version of Autoblog.

[Source: The Detroit News Image: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty]

Report: Toyota ‘whistleblower’ documents trouble House panel

Airplanes have so-called black boxes that track what takes place in the moments before a crash. allowing authorities and investigators to piece together the accident so that something similar can be avoided in the future. Soon, cars and trucks will be carrying such devices as well, spurred on in no small part by the recent cases of unintended acceleration reported by a number of Toyota drivers and the automaker’s subsequent recalls.

At present, Toyota has but one lone device in the United States – a prototype, at that – capable of reading the ‘black boxes’ it already installs in its automobiles. Not for long, though. During his testimony at the Congressional Hearing for Toyota Safety, Yoshimi Inaba, head of Toyota’s North American operations, indicated that “hundreds of units of them [will be] available by the end of April.”

Toyota also plans to make these black box readers commercially available by 2011, which is one full year before the U.S. government has mandated. We still have a few questions, though. For instance, how much data is recorded by the box, and for how long? Even if it’s found that a car was operating at or near full throttle, will there be a way to know whether that was the operator’s fault or a failure of the car? Regardless, having the ability to read whatever data is available sounds like a major step in the right direction.

Tired of Toyota recall news? Try out the recall-free version of Autoblog.

[Image: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images ]

Toyota to ship hundreds of ‘black box’ recorders to U.S. for analysis

The Congressional hearings entitled “Response by Toyota and NHTSA to Incidents of Sudden Unintended Acceleration” may have started today, but the actual response by Toyoda – that’s Akio Toyoda with a “D,” head of the Japanese automaker – will come tomorrow.

If you plan on tuning in to see what interesting new information comes out in Toyoda’s testimony, please allow us to direct you to his prepared testimony after the break. There you’ll read about three separate topics, according to Toyoda: “Toyota’s basic philosophy regarding quality control, the cause of the recalls, and how we will manage quality control going forward.”

Perhaps the most telling part of Toyoda’s testimony comes at the very end:

My name is on every car. You have my personal commitment that Toyota will work vigorously and unceasingly to restore the trust of our customers.

Remember too that Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. President Jim Lentz will also go before the committee, where he’s expected to reiterate that electronic problems are not the cause of the automaker’s unintended acceleration woes.

Both Toyoda and Yoshimi Inaba’s (Chairman and CEO of Toyota Motor Sales) comments are available after the jump. Both are suscint and to-the-point, but the real fireworks will happen during the questioning period at tomorrow’s hearing.

Tired of Toyota recall news? Try out the recall-free version of Autoblog.

[Source: Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Image: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty]

Continue reading House committee releases Toyota execs’ opening statements for tomorrow’s hearing

House committee releases Toyota execs’ opening statements for tomorrow’s hearing

This Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing on Toyota’s recent recall woes entitled “Toyota Gas Pedals: Is the Public at Risk?” The committee released a full witness list today, which includes a number of people we were expecting to testify like Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland, President and CEO of Toyota Motor North America Yoshimi Inaba and his boss, the President and CEO of Toyota Motor Corporation, Akio Toyoda.

Along with representatives from a couple of consumer safety groups, there’s one witness on the list who took us by surprise: Mrs. Fe Lastrella, a relative of four family members who perished late last August when off-duty California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor lost control of a loaner Lexus ES350 when it experienced sudden unintended acceleration. Mrs. Lastrella is the mother of Saylor’s wife, Cleofe, and brother-in-law, Chris Lastrella, who were both killed in the accident. Lastrella’s 13-year-old granddaughter Mahala also died in the accident.

The fatal crash was arguably the catalyst for Toyota’s recent fall from grace, as it led to the first recall last October of 3.8 million vehicles for defective floor mats that could entrap accelerator pedals on certain models. That recall has since been expanded to 4.9 million vehicles and was followed by another recall in late January of 2.3 million Toyota vehicles with pedals that could also experience unintended acceleration in certain situations.

What effect will Mrs. Lastrella’s testimony on Wednesday have on the hearing’s outcome? The presence of a family member, a mother no less, who has been so devastatingly impacted by an accident involving a Toyota, will serve to put a human face on the question of whether or not the tragedy could have been prevented – and equally important, whether Toyota, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – or both – are to blame.

[Source: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Image: John Neff]

Tired of Toyota recall news? Try out the recall-free version of Autoblog.

Congress: Mother of Lexus crash victims to testify at Toyota hearing

If you saved your company $1 million, you’d brag about it, right? How about $100 million? Certainly you’d be looking for a few pats on the back for such a massive sum of loot. A report in The Detroit Free Press reveals that Yoshimi Inaba, chairman and CEO of Toyota Motors Sales in the U.S., allegedly did such bragging back on July 6, 2010, but the topic was “Wins for Toyota” and the subject was safety.

The Freep obtained the internal presentation on Sunday as Toyota handed over thousands of documents to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in advance of its February 24 hearing. The over $100 million in savings was spread across nine points outlined by Inaba in the presentation, which outlined savings obtained by delaying safety regulations and avoiding investigations.

Inaba’s presentation states that the company saved $124 million with “added lead-time and phase in” for a side-impact airbag standard. There is also a bullet under the defects subheading that says the company saved $100 million by negotiating an equipment recall on the Toyota Camry and Lexus ES. Yahoo expands on that bullet in a recent report, saying that the automaker limited the amount of vehicles affected by the 2007 recall to 55,000, saving 50,000 man-hours of labor. Other items mentioned in the internal presentation are the avoidance of an investigation for the Tacoma rust issue and $11 million in savings by delaying a rule for tougher door locks on the Sienna.

While it’s likely that there are similar documents floating around the halls of every major automaker, Toyota is under more scrutiny than normal after three high-profile recalls have severely damaged its once sterling reputation for quality and reliability. The company’s official response to the discovery of this document is after the jump, we’re likely to hear more about it when company CEO Akio Toyoda visits Washington to answer questions from the Fed.

Tired of Toyota recall news? Try out the recall-free version of Autoblog.

[Source: The Detroit Free Press]

Continue reading Report: Toyota bragged about saving $100M by avoiding, limiting recalls

Report: Toyota bragged about saving $100M by avoiding, limiting recalls

According to a report by Automotive News, the House Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena to former Toyota lawyer Dimitrios Biller requiring him to submit secret documents to Congress in advance of a February 24 hearing about the Japanese automaker’s unintended acceleration issues. Biller is required to submit the reported four 18-inch bank boxes of documents to Congress by February 23. Biller filed a federal racketeering suit against his former employer over the summer.

Just one week ago Toyota won a temporary injunction against Biller barring the lawyer from releasing any of the secret documents. Biller’s lawyer, Jeffrey Allen, says the congressional subpoena supersedes the injunction and that Biller intends to supply the documents by the February 23 deadline. Biller contends that Toyota destroyed multiple documents that could have implicated the automaker in SUV rollover cases. In late September, Texas Judge T. John Ward ordered Toyota not to destroy any crash informaton.

Toyota is suing Biller for $33.5 million for divulging confidential information and Biller’s lawyer contends that Toyota’s ex-lawyer flew to Japan and tried for four days to get executives to air his concerns over the handling of the information. Biller was then reportedly asked to resign and given a severance.

The February 24 House Oversight meeting has still more drama due to the fact that Toyota President Akio Toyoda will testify before the committee. Toyoda originally planned to leave the testifying to Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota’s operations in North America. That changed when committee chairman Edolphus Towns (D-NY) sent a formal letter to the Toyota president requesting his presence.

We’re not sure how the alleged SUV rollover info is relevant to unintended acceleration, but the bigger picture may be that congress is looking into whether Toyota has a history of hiding evidence that could potentially paint the company in a bad light.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub. Req. Image: Junko Kimura/Getty Images]

Report: House subcommittee petitions Toyota for secret documents