Featured Too much inventory

Here is one quote I found.
Toyota Motor Corp's average inventory for the three months ended in Mar. 2017 was $20,113 Mil. Toyota Motor Corp's cost of goods sold for the three months ended in Mar. 2017was $54,695 Mil. Hence, Toyota Motor Corp's days inventory for the three months ended in Mar. 2017 was 33.55.

from Toyota Motor Corp (TM) Days Inventory

 

Great question. Been wondering the same. Maybe some of the main auto site writers can tell us. @Jeff N writes from time-to-time, so may know.

An exception to the too much inventory situation is the Prime. Prime U.S. inventory had been weakly but slowly growing for months then:

...inventory hit 3-month lows for the Prime in June (averaging less than 700 units for the month), as Toyota looked to fill in inventory at home and around the world, and the result showed in the US, with “just” 1,619 sold.

June 2017 Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sales Report Card

In the most recent month reported, Toyota sold 5,369 Prime in Japan! Looking at my local area inventory, there are fewer Prime on lots than there were since January. Guessing many/most of the U.S. Prime are on lots in the Northeast where there are incredible cash back deals up to $3,500.

 

Since the reporting of 135 days of the toyota 86, all the other cars must be less Inside Evs says that there isn't enough inventory for the prime, and it would be selling better with more. We can assume because the prius is shipped from japan, inventory on that would be higher than domestically (north american) made toyotas. Camry levels also should be high, as they build ahead, and the 2018s just started rolling off the line june 28. There may be deals on those camry hybrids soon, as the new ones seem to have them beat in every way. Really toyota does not have any real inventory problems with their efficient cars.

 

GM has a problem, it was worse before bankruptcy, but they still do not believe in lean production. Lean production has you cut production in real time as sales go down, and Toyota is one of the masters of working with suppliers here. The reason you don't cut production is to help suppliers and workers in the short term. The result is often deep discounting of vehicles. These leads to laying off workers, instead of finding other work for them to do when production should have been cut. GM also has so many configurations that dealers stock the wrong ones, and these sit until the dealer discounts the options that people didn't want in the first place. GM was actually in worse shape in May. Change overs eat inventory, and you need to build inventory for the change over to the new model year.

Ford and fiat chrysler have the same problem, but to a much lesser extent. I don't think they will be caught badly in a down turn.

VW has a different problem. There was a big inventory short fall at dealers. Dealers then told vw they needed more cars than they actually did, to get the ones they really wanted. The short falls, have now led to surpluses, with corporate still trying to figure out how many will sell in american dealerships.

 

Sorry, sales and inventory numbers are not in my department. I glance at the tables put together by others but don't follow the numbers very closely. I have noticed that the regular Prius hybrid sales have fallen quite a bit. With all the cheap gas sloshing around this feels like it did in the early 2000's before the Iraq war and gas prices skyrocketed. Everyone was buying huge SUVs and the US car companies had poor quality smaller cars that nobody wanted when the SUV and truck sales slumped. At least GM has a much better small car and hybrid lineup in place now as a fallback position.