Toyota Thailand Rolls Back Full-Year Sales Forecasts

Toyota Thailand bows to the inevitable and slashes its full-year forecast for both the auto industry in Thailand and its own sales.

Citing the sluggish economy, President Kyoichi Tanada says industrywide full-year sales now are expected to come in at between 760,000 and 770,000 units.

Tanada sees Toyota’s sales ending the year at about 265,000 units, down from the previous forecast of 280,000.

However, Tanada tells reporters visiting Toyota’s R&D and manufacturing-support headquarters for Asia-Pacific in Samut Prakan that the automaker expects overall annual car sales to rebound to about 1 million units within three years.

Toyota was showing off its regional R&D operation, which employs about 2,500 staff, including 1,400 are engineers. The facility’s achievements include work on alternative-fuel engines and its involvement in the development of hybrid family-vehicle software.

Tanada says Toyota will continue to invest in the center, “depending on the situation,” but The Nation newspaper reports he wants the military government to waive import taxes on equipment to be used at the facility. He says this is one way to support Toyota’s transfer of Japanese technology to Thailand.

The center, officially Toyota Motor Asia Pacific Engineering and Mfg., was established in 2003 at Bang-bo, Samutprakarn, 35 miles (60 km) southeast of Bangkok with investment of TB1.3 billion ($46.5 million).

It is the third such Toyota operation established outside Japan after the U.S. and Europe. It is responsible for product and technology development for 11 countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa.