Toyota has once again cut production to a number of key facilities in Japan, with November’s shut-down period affecting many popular models and potentially extending the already lengthy wait times for some cars.
In total, eight production plants will be shuttered for up to nine days early next month, affecting models like the Corolla, just-launched Corolla Cross, Camry, LandCruiser, Yaris, Yaris Cross, Prado and hot-selling RAV4.
And it’s not just Toyota that’s affected, with Lexus production facilities that crank out the NX, LS, ES, UX and RX (as well as the IS and RC) also being shuttered for a number of days.
A Toyota Australia spokesperson told CarsGuide that concerned customers should get in touch with their dealer.
“Toyota Australia continues to work closely with our global production teams to secure as many vehicles for our market as possible,” they said.
“Due to the evolving nature of this situation, Toyota dealers are best placed to continue to provide updates to customers on delivery timeframes for individual orders.”
According to the Toyota release, production numbers will be cut to about 800,000 units for November, with about 250,00 units built in Japan and 550,000 units produced outside of Japan.
As a point of comparison, Toyota produced 821,329 vehicles in November 2021, with Japanese production at 275,234 units and global production at 546,095.
This means Japan’s November production number will be about 11 per cent less than the corresponding month last year, amidst wait times for Toyota vehicles blowing out to up to 18 months for some popular models.
As such, Toyota is already admitting it must revise down the expected forecast of 9.7 million units for the Japanese financial year 2023 (to the end of March 2023), though to what figure is currently unclear.
For the FY22 (April 2021-March 2022), Toyota produced around 8.6 million vehicles globally, and had expected to significantly ramp up production of new vehicles in 2023.
However, Toyota has been plagued with production shutdowns every month this year.
According to the Toyota release: “We at Toyota would like to again apologise for the repeated adjustments to our production plan due to the parts shortage resulting from the spready of Covid-19, and for causing considerable inconvenience to our customers.
“It remains difficult to look ahead due to the impact of semi-conductor parts and other factors,” it said.
“However, we will continue to closely examine the supply of parts and work with related parties to consider all possible measures to ensure that we can deliver as many vehicles as possible to our customers at the earliest possible date.”
Despite all this however, Toyota Australia is still on track to be the biggest-selling marque in 2022, with year-to-date sales at 176,410 – just 361 units off the pace of 2021’s figures.
In fact, Toyota Australia is only down 0.2 per cent in an overall market that is down 0.6 per cent, meaning it could actually increase its market share in 2022 despite the supply issues and long wait times.
Keyword: You might be waiting a bit longer for your new Toyota RAV4, Corolla, Camry or LandCruiser