Toyota remains world’s biggest car-maker

Toyota maintain stable global sales and increase overall production in 2022, giving it the lead as the world’s largest automaker.

The company reported 10,483,024 global sales last year, down 0.1 percent – ​​comprised of 9,566,961 sales from Toyota, 766,091 from Daihatsu, and 149,972 from Hino Trucks.

Global production meanwhile finished 2022 at 10,610,604 vehicles across the Toyota (9,026,713), Daihatsu (1,408,795) and Hino (175,096) brands – up 5.3 percent despite demand continuing to outstrip supply.

Production outside Japan (6,957,592 units, up 12.5 percent) outpaced production inside Japan (3,653,012, down 6.2 percent) – with the domestic market hit hard.

Toyota has already talked about seeking further production increases of as high as 15 percent this year, to top the waiting list.

“Despite the impact of spare parts shortages caused by the spread of COVID-19, increased demand for semiconductors, and other factors, global production increased year-on-year due to increased capacity and production optimization in North America and Asia, recovery from related spare parts shortages with the spread of COVID-19 in the previous year, and other factors,” TMC said in a statement.

Toyota Group extended its lead over nearest rival Volkswagen Group, which reported a 7.0 percent decline in 2022 sales across its various brands to 8,262,800 units.

The Hyundai Motor Group including Kia and Genesis sold 6,848,198 units (up 2.7 percent), outpacing the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance with about 6.3 million sales (down about 13.5 percent). We say estimates because Mitsubishi only reports production number.

China’s SAIC Motor (parent of MG and LDV among others) reported 5.3 million sales, down 2.9 percent, but recorded over a million exports for the first time, up 46 percent.

We await sales results for Stellantis, Ford and General Motors.

*Approximate

MORE: Toyota plans 15 percent more production by 2023 to reduce wait times