2017 Full Year Earnings

• Reported Q4 2017 financial results, revenue and profits continued to grow strongly, in part due to a weakened yen. The company revised its financial forecasts up, whilst keeping sales outlook flat, as a result. (Toyota)
• Announced full year global production of 10,466,451 vehicles, a 2.5% increase on 2016. (Toyota)

December

• A director at Toyota’s Indian JV said the government’s plan for all-electric vehicle sales by 2030 was “not practical and not the way forward”, calling for more leeway in meeting the underlying environmental aims. (Times of India)
• Said that by 2025 every vehicle will have an electrified version (HEV -- which may include 48V / PHEV) or be fully electric (BEV / FCEV). In the early 2020s the company will have 10 BEVs models worldwide and will introduce FCEVs on top. By 2030 the company aims to sell 1 million BEVs / FCEVs each year and 4.5 million HEVs / PHEVs -- equating to an expected sales mix of around 10% BEV / FCEV. (Toyota)
• Will merge two existing leasing subsidiaries into a single entity with a broader mission that includes mobility services. The new arm will be called Toyota Mobility Service Co. (Toyota)
• Merging three existing subsidiaries to create a conversion and accessories business. The rationale for the move appears to be a simpler business structure and efficiency gains. (Toyota)
• Launched a new online leasing system in the UK called NGage. This allows customers to receive and sign documents digitally, which Toyota expects will improve turnaround time and reduce mistakes. (Toyota)
• Released production and sales forecasts for 2018. The company expects overall sales to increase around 1%, although production will drop by (2)%. (Toyota)
• Agreed to study the feasibility of a joint automotive prismatic battery business with Panasonic. (Toyota)
• Said that it has stopped selling the diesel powered Auris in the UK. (Autocar)

November

• Announced a series of executive moves, including a new CFO and a change to the structure that will decrease the power of central functions and create greater regional control and accountability. (Toyota)
• Announced that it will build a facility that can generate hydrogen from agricultural waste and then convert it to electricity using fuel cells. The power plant will be online in 2020 and have an output of 2.35 MW. (Toyota)
• Created a $4 million fund to provide money for mobility solutions aimed at users with lower-limb paralysis. (Toyota)
• Is reportedly seeking to “heighten awareness” of US employees about their need to improve cost competitiveness by creating an internal video that says it is cheaper to import cars from Japan than make them in the US. Presumably the video doesn’t highlight the c.(30)% depreciation of yen to dollar over the past few years. (Bloomberg)
• Issued a new €600 million green bond which will be used exclusively to finance retail contracts on Toyota and Lexus vehicles that meet certain emissions criteria. (Daimler)
• Announced a cooperation with Suzuki to sell electric cars in India. The current working assumption (at MoU stage) is that Suzuki will make the vehicles and Toyota will sell a badge-engineered version. (Toyota)
• Recalling around 29,000 C-HR and 40,000 Prius in the US for problems with the parking brake and fuse system respectively. (Toyota)
• Launched a scheme in partnership with Launch Mobility aimed at ride-hailing drivers to offer used vehicles for short term rentals. (Toyota)
• A senior executive predicted that internal combustion engines would power only 10% of new vehicles by 2040 and have been phased out of production entirely by 2050. (Autocar)
• Now offers behaviour and usage based insurance in Japan using telematics data received from the car. (Toyota)
• Toyota AI Ventures said that it would be making further investments in Israeli companies. (Reuters)

Q3 Financials (November)

• Reported Financial results for Q3 2017 / Q2 fiscal year. Sales of 2,174,324 were down (0.8%) on a year-over-year basis, although revenue of 7.14 trillion yen (about $64.4 billion) was up 10.2% YoY. Operating income of 522 billion yen / $4.0 billion was up 10.0% YoY. (Toyota)
• Reported Q3 group production of 2,553,144 units, down (1)% on a year-over-year basis. (Toyota)

October

• Said that it expected hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to have cost parity with hybrid vehicles in the Japanese market by 2025 due to a “substantial move forward” that the next generation technology, being launched in the early 2020’s will bring. (Autocar)
• Fuel cell sales will take off significantly from 2030, according to comments made by one of Toyota’s Spanish PR team at a conference. (Europa Press)
• Is scaling back on investment at its under-construction plant in Mexico. The company will spend 30% less and reduce the intended capacity by half, to 100,000 units. Toyota said that the new joint venture plant with Mazda had changed the previous model line allocation plan. (Reuters)
• Showed a concept of the replacement for Lexus’s flagship LS saloon and implied that the vehicle will have an SAE L3 driving system for use on highways from 2020. (Toyota)
• A senior executive said that he believed Toyota would not launch any new diesel-powered models in Europe, pointing to the success of the C-HR, which is only available with petrol or hybrid powertrains. (Autocar)
• Toyota executives, prompted by UK media, said that the uncertainty over a Brexit settlement was making it difficult to plan and that the company was certain that the imposition of tariffs would have a “big negative impact” on competitiveness. (The Guardian)
• Is recalling around 310,000 Sienna vehicles to rectify possible gearbox problems. (Toyota)
• Said that Kobe Steel supplied aluminium had been used in vehicles but that it passed Toyota’s own safety tests. Investigations are still ongoing regarding steel components used by Toyota. (Toyota)
• Unveiled a Concept-i family of vehicles at the Tokyo motor show that consist of an electric scooter, a compact car and a vehicle that can seat four people in comfort. (Toyota). The company also show a vehicle called “Fine-Comfort Ride”, which was its take on the type of lounge like autonomous vehicles such as the M-B F105. (Toyota)
• Will reportedly reduce the number of vehicles it sells in the Japanese market from 60 today to around 30 by 2025 in order to re-direct capital to new areas. (Economic Times of India)
• Said in a company video that full self-driving technology was “many years off” and cautioned that some companies researching autonomy were potentially not thinking through all the safety implications, saying “it’s one thing to make a five-minute YouTube video” but putting millions of vehicles into the hands of “everyday people” was a different scale of problem. The company believes that billions of miles of testing are necessary and when the team hear other companies talk about their millions of testing miles they think “that’s nice”. Video at 46:00. (Toyota)
• Said that it would use Hitachi’s internet of things platform, Lumada, to increase productivity in its factories. Toyota believes that big data can augment existing problem solving methods (referred to in Toyota literature as PDCA -- the Plan, Do Check, Act Deming cycle). (Toyota)

September

• Toyota, Mazda and Denso (a Toyota-affiliated supplier) are creating a joint venture to work on electric vehicle development. The new business, to be called EV C.A. Spirit Corporation, will have around 40 employees and will seek to create a common architecture for electric vehicles. Toyota and Mazda hope that the common platform can be scaleable to a range of vehicle sizes. (Toyota)
• Published a white paper on the future of autonomous driving and gave details of its latest iteration of a driverless product in development -- Platform 2.1. Within the document, Toyota says that it sees SAE Level 3 autonomy “potentially as challenging to implement as Level Four automation” (it is hard because of the need to ensure a human driver can take control, something that human drivers have shown themselves to be often incapable of). (Toyota)
• Toyota has separated capability into two areas -- Guardian and Chauffeur. Guardian roughly collects existing driver assistance aids and seeks to improve them so that a vehicle could try to always prevent a crash. Chauffeur is a full self-driving mode. Toyota aims to bring a highly capable highway-only Level 2 system, that it calls Highway teammate into production in 2020 and self-driving in cities, called Urban teammate in the 2020s. Toyota implies that both systems are driver-supervised, but given its earlier comments on the practical difficulties of SAE Level 3, this seems like more of a hedge in public statements. (Toyota)
• Made an investment in PKSHA, a company that aims to develop natural speech for self-driving cars. (Detroit News)
• Said that it has no plans to launch fully electric vehicles in India and will wait for the infrastructure to be developed before it looks to launch any vehicles. (Economic Times of India)
• Toyota’s president said that it would continue to make a variety of powertrain options available to customers; spanning ICEs, hybrids, BEVs and fuel cell vehicles because Toyota believes that customers rather than manufacturers should make the technological choices. He also said that the company had been “a bit late to the game” on BEVs. (Reuters)
• Said that it was launching a Japan only sub-brand called GR (Gazoo Racing) for sporty versions of its products. The range could be sold outside Japan eventually. (Auto Express)
• A senior executive said that the company was becoming increasingly concerned over Brexit. He called the company’s future in the UK “a big question mark” and said that although a few months ago the UK government had expressed complete confidence in a tariff-free UK-EU trade deal, “they are not saying that any more”. (The Guardian)
• Said that it will add a second style of hybrid to its European line-up, moving beyond fuel economy considerations (the traditional preserve of the hybrid) by offering a version that will increase power. (Toyota)
• Said that it was already close to its 2020 goal of a 50% sales mix of hybrid vehicles in Western Europe. Yaris is at 45%, RAV4 at 52%, Auris at 65% and C-HR at 77%. (Toyota)
• Toyota’s chairman said in a television interview that he thinks two or three more technological breakthroughs are needed in order for fully electric vehicles to become competitive with ICE vehicles. He said that he was unable to say when a vehicle powered by a battery would be economically viable. He also said that major carmakers would have to partner with start-ups on new mobility technologies and those that didn’t “would not survive”. (InsideEVs)

August

• Announced five companies it had decided to work with on solving future mobility and ownership challenges: Caulis (risk assessment and security); giftee (e-gifts); Sharenori (car sharing); Nightley (customer data collection) and Ateam (services for used car owners). (Toyota)
• Participated in ride hailing service Grab’s latest fund-raising round and announced a collaboration to install Toyota-developed data recording devices in Grab vehicles. (Toyota)
• Announced July production results. Global production of 824,943 units was down (0.2)% on a year-over-year basis. (Toyota)
• Said it was creating a new group called Connected Technologies to develop in-car user experiences. The team will be made up of around 100 people and combine existing IT and product development employees. (Toyota)
• A patent for a “cloaking device” filed by Toyota that uses thin screens and external cameras to embed screens in vehicle A pillars and improve driver visibility invited the internet to speculate about James Bond’s Aston Martin Vanish from Die Another Day finally reaching production reality. (Free Patents Online)
• Announced Sevco Pacific as a partner in its tests to develop the Toyota Mobility Services Platform, which has been developed with help from Getaround. Sevco, a Toyota dealer in Hawaii, will use the in-house developed hardware and software to run a car sharing scheme. (Toyota)
• Announced the creation of a consortium with partners including Denso, Ericsson, Intel and NTT to explore infrastructure requirements for connected vehicles. Toyota expects V2C transfer of 10 exabytes per month by 2025. (Toyota)
• Said that it will delay the launch of its new plant in Mexico from 2019 to the first half of 2020 because its new JV with Mazda will produce the car originally planned for the plant and it needs time to switch to a new model. (Reuters)
• Announced that it would deepen its existing cooperation with Mazda. As a part of the move, Toyota is taking a 5% stake in Mazda via newly issued shares and Mazda will take a 0.25% stake in Toyota. The cooperation will create a JV factory to produce 300,000 units in the US with start of production in 2021 as well as joint engineering projects and product sharing (currently confined to Japan). (Mazda)
• Said that it was investing an additional 10.5 billion yen (about $95 million) in deep-learning AI company Preferred Networks. (Toyota)
• Will expand its EV sharing pilot program Ha:mo to Thailand. (Economic Times)

July

• Reported June sales and production figures. June production of 912,387 vehicles was (1.2)% down on a year-over-year basis, with a (3.1)% drop in the Toyota and Lexus brands. On a year to date basis, sales of 5.13 million vehicles was down (2.7)% YoY. (Toyota)
• Is reportedly working on an electric car that will go into production in 2022 and be powered with sold-state batteries. (Reuters)
• Took part in the $159 million series C financing of autonomous vehicle technology company Nauto, alongside GM and BMW. Toyota was already an investor. (More…)
• Reportedly plans to begin large-scale BEV production in China in 2019, with a crossover as the launch vehicle. (More…)
• Announced that it has formed an in-house VC operation called Toyota AI Ventures with $100 million of funding. This builds on the earlier creation of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), based in Silicon Valley. The three investments discussed in the press release have already been made and previously announced by TRI. (More…)
• Received assurances from the UK government around Brexit ahead of a March 2017 announcement that a future product would be built at its UK plant. As in the case of prior discussions with Nissan, the UK government confirmed that a letter had been sent to Toyota but refused to divulge its contents. The government did indicate that the same assurances would be available to other companies. (More…)

Q2 / Fiscal Q1 Earnings

• Reported fiscal first quarter sales of 2,215,111 units with revenues of 7.05 trillion yen, an increase of 7% on a year-over-year basis. Operating income of 574.2 billion yen was down more than (10)% YoY, about half of this drop was explained by exchange. (Toyota)

June

• Said that its Chinese JV FAW-Toyota would install a new assembly line for small SUVs with production capacity of 100,000 units starting in June 2018 and rising to 200,000 units. (..)
• Invested in Israeli vehicle to vehicle communication hardware provider Autotalks. (More…)
• Will recall 1,760 Lexus ES models to fix issues with the steering. (More…)
• Announced May 2017 production and sales results. Global production of 734,574 units was down 1.4% on a year-over-year basis. (More…)
• Daihatsu is intending to enter the Brazilian market, citing the demand for the type of compact cars in which the brand specialises. (More…)
• Says it is open to more M&A to obtain new automotive technologies, including in the field of autonomy. Memo: Toyota’s surplus cash pile is larger than its four nearest rivals combined. (More…)
• Wholly owned subsidiary Toyota Financial Services announced a strategic investment in Finnish company MaaS Global, a start-up intending to build “the world’s first mobility ecosystem). (More…)
• Said that it was working with Line (Japanese messaging app) and NAVER (South Korean search portal) to develop a personal assistant AI that could be used in Cars (Line already has a system called Clova). (More…)
• Was named most valuable automotive brand in the BrandZ survey (conducted by a subsidiary of WPP). (..)
• Issued its April 2017 flash report. Worldwide production of 819,092 units was 8.7% lower than prior year. All three major brands: Toyota, Daihatsu and Hino contributed to the drop. (..)
• Reported May US sales. Total sales of 218,248 units were down 0.5% year-over-year. The main reason for the decrease was a reduction in Lexus sales. (..)
• Issued a recall of around 32,000 Tacoma trucks in the US to correct a defect that could lead to stalling at high speed. (..)
• Has now sold its remaining holding in Tesla. The sale was completed during 2016 but only confirmed recently (More…)

May

• Said that it was exploring the use of blockchain technology to securely store autonomous vehicle driving data from multiple sources. The system Toyota is developing is aimed at improvements in three areas: holding test data, usage based insurance and transacting feeds for car or ride hailing. (..)
• Settled a US class action case relating to failure of airbags supplied by Takata. The overall bill was $553 million of which Toyota’s share was $279 million. (..)
• Announced the launch of a restroom information service at around 19,000 sites in Japan. The aim seems to be to show off the capabilities of Toyota’s telematics service. (..)
• Will be part of an 11-company consortium that aims to accelerate roll-out of hydrogen stations in Japan, targeting 160 stations and 40,000 fuel cell vehicles by 2020. (More…)
• Announced a collaboration with Nvidia to develop artificial intelligence technologies for driverless cars. (..)
• Said that it was on track with the launch of its Mexico plant. (..)
• Took part in a very small funding round for a Japanese flying car company called Cartivator, which is developing a product called Skydrive. Toyota invested 40 million yen. (..)
• Toyota’s North America CEO, Jim Lentz, said that OEMs in the US were continuing to push sales on the basis that a $1 trillion stimulus program supported by the Trump administration would “add 800,000 units” if approved. (..). He also said that NAFTA should not be rescinded, but could perhaps be improved. (More...)
• Reported that its US sales in April were down 4.4% year-over-year. (..)
• Said that has invested $154 million in its Michigan, USA operations in the last two years. (..)

April

• Reported March 2017 and full year production figures. Overall production of 10.4 million vehicles was down 3.6% year-over-year. (..)
• Announced a recall of approximately 228,000 Tacoma trucks in North America. (..)
• Announced a relationship with the Tokyo Hire-Taxi Association to gather data that will enable the introduction of connected taxis. (..)
• Executives speaking off the record indicated that the company’s global fuel cell strategy has been undermined by Chinese regulations supporting battery electric vehicles instead. (..)
• Toyota took part in a $45 million Series C funding round for car sharing service Getaround. (..)
• Created a fuel-cell semi-truck (HGV) to demonstrate the scalability of the fuel cell technology used in the Mirai car. The truck has a fuel cell system double the size of the one in the Mirai. (..)
• The President of Toyota USA said that the US auto market has peaked. His explanation was that the shift from sedans to SUVs has left carmakers with the wrong production mix and they are using incentives until they can change production over to SUVs in sufficient quantity. (..)
• Reported that hybrid sales in Q1 2017 were up 50% year-over-year in Europe. Hybrids are now 40% of Toyota’s European sales. (..)
• Announced a $1.33 billion investment in its Kentucky (USA) plant. (..)
• Announced a five year research program into the communities of the future (Source)

Q1 / Fiscal Q4 Earnings

• Reported results for the 2016 financial year. Vehicle sales of 8.971 million units were up 3.3% year-over-year. Revenue of 27.6 trillion yen ($256 billion) was down 2.8% YoY. Operating Income of 1.99 trillion yen ($18.5 billion) was down 30.1%. The forecast for the current year is for vehicle sales of 8.9 million, revenue of 27.5 trillion yen and operating income of 1.6 trillion yen. The explanation for the lower profits were increased incentives in the US market and exchange rate losses from a stronger yen. (..)

March

• Announced several research projects including high-precision strawberry picking, agricultural modelling and the use of AI in discovering new materials (in particular for batteries)
• February 2017 worldwide production including Daihatsu and Hino of 1.714m units (up 9.4%)
• Announced a collaboration with NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) to pool their skills in the development of connected cars, they plan a field trial in 2018