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Toyota, the world's largest car maker, had already been trying to recover from world-wide product recalls over the past year, when the 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck Japan on March 11 knocking out power for large swathes of the country. It alone has lost production of at least 200,000 cars this month in Japan as a result.
Out of nearly 70 models, only three at two plants remained in production. Another 16 factories remain offline, including the popular Prius along with two other hybrids from its luxury Lexus brand. The majority of Toyota and Lexus assembly plants will not be operational until mid April due to shortages of fuel, supply line disruption, and power shortages.
“Even the cars that are being made, production is running on a day-to-day, almost car-by-car basis, because of parts shortages and supply-line problems,” says Paul Nolasco, a spokesperson from Toyota’s Tokyo offices.
“We’ve announced our working schedule for next week, and beyond that, nobody can say yet what is going to happen,” says Mr. Nolasco.
In spite of the production problems, Toyota has said that given the continuing extreme hardships faced by so many disaster victims, it is inappropriate to talk about the size of financial losses it has incurred.
