Fall Car Sales Heat Up
A top Toyota executive says the auto industry is seeing some very nice sales momentum as we head into the fourth quarter.
Toyota Senior Vice President Don Esmond telling the Automotive Press Association that the annual sales rate for October is running in the 12 to 12.2 million rate...a jump from earlier in the year.
"It's only ten days out of the month," Esmond told WWJ AutoBeat Reporter Jeff Gilbert. "In today's economy, with consumer confidence it could change tomorrow. It's encouraging."
Esmond saying Toyota believes the entire auto industry will sell 11 and a half million vehicles this year, about a million more vehicles than were sold during the depths of the recession in 2009.
Esmond saying that underlying economic signals call for slow growth. He expects the industry to sell about 15 million units by the middle of this decade. That would be a significant rebound, but still well below the 17 million peak a few years ago.
Toyota's owner loyalty rate has returned to normal, said Esmond, after falling off during Toyota's tough recalls earlier this year. He said 80 per cent of recalled Toyota's have been repaired. The average for a recall is about 72 per cent.
The next step for Toyota is adding more product, including new hybrids.
"We will introduce the next member of the Prius family at the 2010 auto show here in Detroit in January," Esmond said.
He wouldn't give specifics, other than to say that Toyota has promised to expand Prius from a single vehicle into a vehicle lineup. He said the hybrid introduced in Detroit will either be a larger, crossover style vehicle, or a small, low cost compact hybrid.
Toyota will unveil an all electric RAV 4 SUV at next month's Los Angeles Auto Show.
This comes as Nissan is launching the all electric Leaf, and GM says it's may be able to build as many as sixty thousand Chevy Volt extended range electric vehicles by 2012.
Esmond said the electric vehicle market is untested, while hybrids have created proven customer interest.
"From one perspective, we've sold almost a million hybrids here in the U.S. I don't think we've sold one Volt or Leaf in that period of time."
