Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday its global sales for January fell 5.6 percent from a year earlier to 709,870 vehicles, marking the second straight month of decline amid a semiconductor shortage and shorter business days in China.
The global chip shortage continued to hit the world's largest automaker while the Lunar New Year holiday period in China, which fell in January this year, cut operating hours at its dealers, the Japanese firm said.
Overseas sales fell 9.7 percent to 579,652 units as the figure for the Chinese market, also hit by the termination of economic stimulus measures to promote purchases of new cars, plunged 23.5 percent. The North American market saw a 12.8 percent fall due to a decline in inventories.
Domestic sales, including mini-vehicles, rose 18.0 percent to 130,218 units in a rebound from a year before when the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic was more severe.
The overall easing of a parts shortage, not including semiconductors, helped drive up production, with Toyota's global output increasing 8.8 percent to 689,090 cars thanks to a 30.1 percent jump in domestic production to 211,572 units.
Overseas production increased 1.4 percent to 477,518 vehicles as growth in North America and Europe was partially offset by a decline in China.
Toyota earlier this month lowered its global production target for fiscal 2022, which will end next month, to 9.1 million units from 9.2 million. The automaker said it will continue to face difficulty procuring semiconductors but noted that the revised figure is still a record high.
Toyota said it expects to produce about 750,000 units in February, almost the same level as a year earlier, and about 900,000 vehicles in March, a record high for a single month.
Global output by Japan's eight major car makers, including Toyota, for January, fell 2.9 percent to 1.86 million units as they struggled to secure enough chips to build cars.
Five of the eight companies saw production declines, with output at Honda Motor Co. dropping 21.7 percent to 280,757 vehicles, while Nissan Motor Co. logged a 25.1 percent decline to 224,236 units.
Suzuki Motor Corp. bucked the trend posting a 22.9 percent increase to 295,345 cars, helped by record-high production in India for a single month, as it focused on models using chips that are easy to procure, it said.
Combined global sales for the eight firms fell 9.6 percent to 1.77 million vehicles.
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