Toyota

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  • Toyota

Toyota Motor Corporation (Japanese: トヨタ自動車株式会社 Hepburn: Toyota Jidōsha KK?, IPA: [toꜜjota], /tɔɪˈoʊtə/) is a Japaneseautomotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. In March 2014 the multinational corporation consisted of 338,875 employees worldwide[4] and, as of February 2016, is the 13th-largest company in the world by revenue. Toyota was the largestautomobile manufacturer in 2012 (by production) ahead of the Volkswagen Group and General Motors.[6] In July of that year, the company reported the production of its 200-millionth vehicle.[7] Toyota is the world's first automobile manufacturer to produce more than 10 million vehicles per year. It did so in 2012 according to OICA,[6] and in 2013 according to company data.[8] As of July 2014, Toyota was the largest listed company in Japan by market capitalization (worth more than twice as much as #2-ranked SoftBank)[9]and by revenue.[10]

The company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. Three years earlier, in 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created its first product, the Type A engine, and, in 1936, its first passenger car, the Toyota AA. Toyota Motor Corporation produces vehicles under 5 brands, including the Toyota brand, Hino, Lexus, Ranz, and Scion. It also holds a 51.2% stake in Daihatsu, a 16.66% stake in Fuji Heavy Industries, a 5.9% stake in Isuzu, a 3.58% stake in the Yamaha Motor Company,[11] and a 0.27% stake in Tesla, as well as joint-ventures with two in China (GAC Toyota and Sichuan FAW Toyota Motor), one in India (Toyota Kirloskar), one in the Czech Republic (TPCA), along with several "nonautomotive" companies.[12] TMC is part of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.

  • History 

1930s

In 1924, Sakichi Toyoda invented the Toyoda Model G Automatic Loom. The principle of jidoka, which means the machine stops itself when a problem occurs, became later a part of the Toyota Production System. Looms were built on a small production line. In 1929, the patent for the automatic loom was sold to a British company, generating the starting capital for the automobile development.

Toyota was started in 1933 as a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works devoted to the production of automobiles under the direction of the founder's son, Kiichiro Toyoda.[24] Its first vehicles were the A1 passenger car and the G1 in 1935. The Toyota Motor Co. was established as an independent company in 1937. In 2008, Toyota's sales surpassed General Motors, making Toyota number one in the world.

Vehicles were originally sold under the name "Toyoda" (トヨダ), from the family name of the company's founder, Kiichirō Toyoda. In April 1936, Toyoda's first passenger car, the Model AA, was completed. The sales price was 3,350 yen, 400 yen cheaper than Ford or GM cars.

In September 1936, the company ran a public competition to design a new logo. Of 27,000 entries, the winning entry was the three Japanese katakana letters for "Toyoda" in a circle. But Risaburō Toyoda, who had married into the family and was not born with that name, preferred "Toyota" (トヨタ) because it took eight brush strokes (a lucky number) to write in Japanese, was visually simpler (leaving off the diacritic at the end), and with a voiceless consonant instead of a voiced one (voiced consonants are considered to have a "murky" or "muddy" sound compared to voiceless consonants, which are "clear").

Since toyoda literally means "fertile rice paddies", changing the name also prevented the company from being associated with old-fashioned farming. The newly formed word was trademarked and the company was registered in August 1937 as the Toyota Motor Company.

1940s - 1950s

From September 1947, Toyota's small-sized vehicles were sold under the name "Toyopet" (トヨペット).[31] The first vehicle sold under this name was the Toyopet SA,[32] but it also included vehicles such as the Toyopet SB light truck, Toyopet Stout light truck,[33] Toyopet Crown, Toyopet Master, and the Toyopet Corona. The word "Toyopet (Japanese article)" was a nickname given to the Toyota SA due to its small size, as the result of a naming contest the Toyota Company organized in 1947. However, when Toyota eventually entered the American market in 1957 with the Crown, the name was not well received due to connotations of toys and pets.[34] The name was soon dropped for the American market, but continued in other markets until the mid-1960s.

1960s - 1970s

By the early 1960s, the US had begun placing stiff import tariffs on certain vehicles. The so-called "chicken tax" of 1964 placed a 25% tax on imported light trucks.[35] In response to the tariff, Toyota, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. began building plants in the US by the early 1980s.

1980s

Toyota received its first Japanese Quality Control Award at the start of the 1980s and began participating in a wide variety of motorsports. Due to the 1973 oil crisis, consumers in the lucrative US market began turning to small cars with better fuel economy. American car manufacturers had considered small economy cars to be an entry-level product, and their small vehicles employed a low level of quality to keep the price low.

In 1982, the Toyota Motor Company and Toyota Motor Sales merged into one company, the Toyota Motor Corporation. Two years later, Toyota entered into a joint venture with General Motors called the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc, NUMMI, operating an automobile-manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. The factory was an old General Motors plant that had been closed for two years. Toyota then started to establish new brands at the end of the 1980s, with the launch of their luxury division Lexus in 1989.

1990s

In the 1990s, Toyota began to branch out from producing mostly compact cars by adding many larger and more luxurious vehicles to its lineup, including a full-sized pickup, the T100 (and later the Tundra); several lines of SUVs; a sport version of the Camry, known as theCamry Solara; and the Scion brand, a group of several affordable, yet sporty, automobiles targeted specifically to young adults. Toyota also began production of the world's best-selling hybrid car, the Prius, in 1997.

With a major presence in Europe, due to the success of Toyota Team Europe, the corporation decided to set up Toyota Motor Europe Marketing and Engineering, TMME, to help market vehicles in the continent. Two years later, Toyota set up a base in the United Kingdom,TMUK, as the company's cars had become very popular among British drivers. Bases in Indiana, Virginia, and Tianjin were also set up. In 1999, the company decided to list itself on the New York and London Stock Exchanges.

2000s

In 2001, Toyota's Toyo Trust and Banking merged with two other banks to form UFJ Bank, which was accused of corruption by Japan's government for making bad loans to alleged Yakuza crime syndicates with executives accused of blocking Financial Service Agency inspections.[36] The UFJ was listed among Fortune Magazine's largest money-losing corporations in the world, with Toyota's chairman serving as a director.[37] At the time, the UFJ was one of the largest shareholders of Toyota. As a result of Japan's banking crisis, UFJ merged with the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi to become the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

In 2002, Toyota managed to enter a Formula One works team and establish joint ventures with French motoring companies Citroën andPeugeot a year after Toyota started producing cars in France.

Toyota ranked eighth on Forbes 2000 list of the world's leading companies for the year 2005[38] but slid to 55 for 2011.[39] The company was number one in global automobile sales for the first quarter of 2008.[40]

In 2007, Toyota released an update of its full-sized truck, the Tundra, produced in two American factories, one in Texas and one in Indiana. Motor Trend named the Tundra "Truck of the Year", and the 2007 Toyota Camry "Car of the Year" for 2007. It also began the construction of two new factories, one to build the RAV4 in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada, and the other to build the Toyota Prius in Blue Springs, Mississippi, USA. This plant was originally intended to build the Toyota Highlander, but Toyota decided to use the plant inPrinceton, Indiana, USA, instead. The company has also found recent success with its smaller models—the Corolla and Yaris—as gasoline prices have risen rapidly in the last few years.

2010s

In 2011, Toyota, along with large parts of the Japanese automotive industry, suffered from a series of natural disasters. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami led to a severe disruption of the supplier base and a drop in production and exports.[41][42] Severe flooding during the 2011 monsoon season in Thailand affected Japanese automakers that had chosen Thailand as a production base. Toyota is estimated to have lost production of 150,000 units to the tsunami and production of 240,000 units to the floods.

The automaker narrowly topped global sales for the first half of 2014, selling 5.1 million vehicles in the six months ending June 30, 2014, an increase of 3.8% on the same period the previous year. Volkswagen AG, which recorded sales of 5.07 million vehicles, was close behind.[43]

In August 2014, Toyota announced it would be cutting its spare-parts prices in China by up to 35%. The company admitted the move was in response to a probe foreshadowed earlier in the month by China's National Development and Reform Commission of Toyota's Lexus spare-parts policies, as part of an industry-wide investigation into what the Chinese regulator considers exorbitantly high prices being charged by automakers for spare parts and after-sales servicing.[44]

In November 2015, the company announced that it would invest US$1 billion over the next 5 years into artificial intelligence and robotics research.

  • Logo and Branding

In 1936, Toyota entered the passenger car market with its Model AA and held a competition to establish a new logo emphasizing speed for its new product line. After receiving 27,000 entries, one was selected that additionally resulted in a change of its moniker to "Toyota" from the family name "Toyoda". The new name was believed to sound better, and its eight-stroke count in the Japanese language was associated with wealth and good fortune. The original logo is no longer found on its vehicles, but remains the corporate emblem used in Japan.

Still, no guidelines existed for the use of the brand name, so "TOYOTA", which was used throughout most of the world, led to inconsistencies in its worldwide marketing campaigns.

To remedy this, Toyota introduced a new worldwide logo in October 1989 to commemorate the 50th year of the company, and to differentiate it from the newly released luxury Lexus brand. The logo made its debut on the 1989 Toyota Celsior and quickly gained worldwide recognition. The three ovals in the new logo combine to form the letter "T", which stands for Toyota. The overlapping of the two perpendicular ovals inside the larger oval represent the mutually beneficial relationship and trust between the customer and the company, while the larger oval surrounding both of these inner ovals represents the "global expansion of Toyota's technology and unlimited potential for the future."[50][51]

The new logo started appearing on all printed material, advertisements, dealer signage, and the vehicles themselves in 1990.

In predominantly Chinese-speaking countries or regions using traditional Chinese characters, e.g. Hong Kong and Taiwan, Toyota is known as "豐田".[52] In Chinese-speaking countries using simplified Chinese characters (e.g. China), Toyota is known as "丰田"[44](pronounced as Fēngtián in Mandarin Chinese and Hɔng Tshan in Minnanese). These are the same characters as the founding family's name "Toyoda" in Japanese.

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