Key Challenges for Toyota

I thought part of old GM's problems were the accounts.
I can't picture engineers and designers swapping a Chevy emblem for a Pontiac one on a car and being satisfied with the result.

 

One of the problems at gm was the dealer network. GM should have killed brands and dumped dealers. But by having Chevy, oldsmobile, pontiac, buick, cadillac, saab, hummer, gmc, geo, saturn, opel. It was a mess. Toyota has 3 Toyota, Lexus, and scion and maybe they don't even need scion. This spread engineering resources low, and they spent time making slightly different versions for each brand.

Now geo, saturn, oldsmobile, saab, hummer, and pontiac 6 of the 11. Its a good start. They seem to be killing chevy in europe, so maybe chevy doesn't get me too cars with opel. That may be another advance with really 4 - Chevy, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC - with different names in europe and other places That's a lot better, although the buick and GMC brands are probably unnecessary. Engineers no longer waste time making small changes going from chevy to oldsmobile to buick to cadillac of the same car. It does make sense to add luxury to a chevy tahoe and make a cadillac escalade, but I don't think making a GMC Yukon too makes all that much sense (I think these are the triplets, but I may have the wrong SUVs).

But yes toyota problems are easier to solve than gm.

 

GM may have wussed out on making Chevy a global brand. Talk was that was the goal, but by keeping Opel, it seems they back tracked there.
Buick is big in China, but why not just call Chevy Buick there?
GMC is because their marketing campaign to differentiate it from Chevy was too successful. 20% of GMC truck owners may buy a Ford over a Chevy.

 

I think we have drifted terribly off topic here. The engineering challenge for gm was building 3 slightly different cars for europe one with a chevy nameplate, one with saab, and one with opel/holden. I think they are down to one european variant, and my guess is gm europe in their typical incompetence probably picked the wrong name. They lost $1.37B in europe in 2014. China probably doesn't need chevy and buick, but if buick sells better, just call them buicks. GM-China is doing very well.

Toyota doesn't have this problem, or much of me too cars. The only one I can think of is the Lexus ES/Toyota Avalon and having 4 or 5 of these doesn't really hurt. They are trying to implement part of the vw and ford platform strategy to reduce costs, add quality, and this may have some hiccups, but it is a good change to make.

 

Agreed, sharing the 'bones' of a platform between a few models among a basic and upscale brand seem to be the best course for profitability.

I understand the why of Scion, but its goals of attracting younger buyers might have been accomplished without a whole new brand. The Scion only models sell as Toyotas in the rest of the world. The no haggle pricing eliminates the apprehension of car shopping, but coupled with well equipped base trims likely hurt some models, i.e. the iQ. I think Toyota could have just brought back or introduced new some performance models, and expanded the color palette of their main models beyond black, white, silver, red, and blue, in order to get the same effect.

 

Another challenge for Toyota that I can think of is what to do with all those Prius owners they've convinced to embrace hybrids. Will they keep buying more hybrids, or will they fully embrace the merits of EVs and take their money elsewhere? I was encouraged to cross the hybrid bridge Toyota built, but all I see on the other side is a Tesla. I don't want another gas-only or even partial gas car. And I absolutely don't want hydrogen. Perhaps I was mistaken as to their technological direction, but it's looking likely that I'll be a 'one and done' Toyota fan.

 

Bob, I agree. Standardization that allows for interchangable mating of system can make a product less expensive and more flexible and affordable in the beginning but as the standards age they can become a barrier to innovation and a performance bottleneck. Standardization occurs because the technology has mature enough that the risk of the becoming obsolete in the short term is low enough that it does not open a window for a competitor to take over a company's market share with a better product.

It seems to me the lack of a real competitor for the Prius in the near future may be one of the factors that is getting Toyota consider making their hybrid technology more affordable rather than better. Making hybrid tech more affordable would be in line with their main objective to capture more market share. One of the factors to this maybe the assessment that oil prices -gasoline will likely not increase in the next one or two product cycles - hence the economic incentive to buying a higher fuel efficiency vehicle has lessen. Given that the 2010 Prius is rated at 38 km/Liter (using the Japanese mpg test cycle standard) -- the paper's suggestion that HEV tech will only reach 40 km/Liter by 2020 suggests that the overall fuel efficiency of the next gen of Toyota HEVs will only see a incremental improvement of a 5% increase in fuel efficiency.

Imho - it isn't mpg that is limiting the Prius market share expansion but functionality - most people in the USA are hooked on Suv and mini-vans - to get more of the American motor vehicle market share - Toyota has to customized -optimize their HEV tech for the American SUV or Minivan market segment.

 

could toyota be going the way of the horse and buggy? every dog has his day.

 

Now that Nimh patents have recently expired and Toyota have tested super capacitors in racing, it will be interesting to see the battery they come up with for the next Gen Prius.

Meet The World’s Quickest Charging Electric Bus

 

The reasons oil prices is likely to remain low is because the Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia has increased its production and is selling their oil at a lower price to command a higher percentage of the global market - they need to earn more money to increase funding of their military to counter regional Shiite/Shia insurgency and to limit the value of any sale of oil captured by the Shiite/shia insurgency groups. The Iran supported Shia insurgency, Houthi, which has overrun Yemen is Saudi Arabia's Sheikdom's first security concern.

 

prices are creeping up. whats oil, 80 bucks?

 

Californians will have $4 gas even if oil was free

 

I wish. WTI is a bit under $60.

 

Worse than that, there were a handful of standard parts that were absolutely horrible and would take out the entire engine or transmission with them. For example, intake manifold gaskets that leak antifreeze into the oil. They would last just long enough to get out of warranty, then grenade the vehicle at about 80k miles. Not exactly a good way to build brand loyalty.

The strange thing is, if you replaced the bad parts (and there's a whole aftermarket making improved parts) before they destroyed a major component, you'd end up with a vehicle that was actually quite reliable and rugged. So if you are able to get a GM past 100k miles, it will probably run forever.

 

How the Toyota New Global Architecture Will Impact Mass-Car Building

 

looks like the beginning of the beginning.

 

Same here in the Washington DC area - variability in gas and diesel prices in the surrounding suburbs is getting smaller.