Toyota Motor Corporation said it planned to lift vehicle production by 22% to a record 11m units in the next fiscal year, which starts on 1 April 2022, from its downwardly revised expectation of 9m units in the current year, according to reports in Japan.
The company’s latest forecast for the next fiscal year assumed the global semiconductor shortage would ease and the pandemic would be brought under control, allowing the company to normalise output and fulfil pent-up demand after it was forced to make substantial cutbacks in the second half of the current fiscal year.
The world’s top automaker by volume had originally planned to produce 9.3m Toyota and Lexus vehicles in the current fiscal year, up from 8.18m the previous year, but this was revised down to 9m in September as semiconductor supplies continued to tighten.
Last month, the company said it might even struggle to reach its lowered target for the current fiscal year due to ongoing semiconductor shortages, as the covid pandemic continued to disrupt supply chains across the Asia-Pacific region. Last week it announced additional plant stoppages for January, on top of the cuts already planned for the first two months of the year.