Toyota Extends Production Halt Until March 26

As we have reported before, the Japanese car manufacturers have been pushing back the date for resuming their production of complete cars following the shut down caused by the recent earthquake in the Northeast of Japan. Toyota has today announced that it will be restarting these factories on March 26th, but it is perfectly possible that this could still be put back. All the manufacturers are citing difficulties in their logistics side resulting in parts shortages as the cause for these delays.

Both production and new car sales figures are expected to take a large hit in March as a result of this major disaster hitting Japan. On the other hand, the Japanese are resilient and I expect that a push for higher efficiency may well result in these companies recovering a lot of this lost capacity later in the year.

Source: Mainichi (Japanese-language)