Toyota Expects June Production To Reach 90% Normal Levels

Toyota and Honda had their production hit hardest by the March 11th earthquake of all of Japan’s car makers. But Toyota is bouncing back and is confident that production capacity will return to about 90% of normal levels in June. This is a big improvement on the 70% figure that was announced just a few weeks ago on May 12th, and a big step up from the 50% capacity that Toyota was running during May.

Things are looking much better than the pessimistic assessment of Toyota’s leadership back in late March, when they were predicting that it could take until the end of the year to normalize output. With production getting back to full capacity in August or September, it looks like Toyota’s plan of making up for lost April capacity in the last quarter of this year could well come to fruition. Sources at Toyota are expressing confidence that the company will be able to match last year’s global annual production figure.

Source: WSJ (Japanese-language)