Toyota may lose the title World’s Largest Automaker to Volkswagen by the end of 2015. As of May, Toyota’s worldwide production is down 4 percent, while Volkswagen is up a tiny 0.2%.
World’s Largest Automakers | ||||
5 Month 2014 | ||||
Jan-May 2015 | Jan-May 2014 | YoY | 2015 proj. | |
Toyota | 4,118,404 | 4,288,082 | -4.0% | 9,884,000 |
Volkswagen | 4,200,000 | 4,190,000 | 0.2% | 10,080,000 |
GM | 4,033,333 | 4,026,713 | 0.2% | 9,680,000 |
Source: Company data. GM, VW: Deliveries. Toyota: Production. | ||||
Blue: Estimate |
As of May, Volkswagen already is nearly 82,000 units ahead of Toyota. If the current trajectories are maintained, Volkswagen could close out the year some 200,000 units ahead of Toyota.
It appears as if global production of automobiles is peaking, something that has been predicted by Toyota a while ago. By going extremely easy in the CAPEX, Toyota booked record profits in 2014, and is predicting similar performance for the current year. For Volkswagen, the title will be very costly. The company is discounting heavily to prop up sales.
Note: Dailykanban.com tracks production, not sales, because this is how the world automaker umbrella organization OICA ranks automakers.
Toyota reports both sales and production, we take production. Volkswagen reports “deliveries” to wholesale – which is, at least for this exercise, close enough to production. GM did the same, but begun reporting retail sales for the Chinese market. GM also reports only quarterly. They May number is an extrapolation.