Toyota is the World's Largest Automakers in 2016
Sep 29, 2016
Toyota factory in Onnaing , France. (Photo: FRANCOIS LO PRESTI/AFP/Getty Images) Who will be the world’s largest automaker by the end of the year? As the race between global giants Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG gets increasingly tighter, the answer likely will remain in doubt for months to come. Earlier in the year, Toyota was out-delivered by Volkswagen, and the supposedly dieselgate-doomed German automaker had a clear shot at reaching its declared target and become the world’s largest. Today, the picture changed. After a sudden push in August deliveries, Toyota now leads VW – not by a whole lot, though.
World’s Largest Automakers
8 Months 2016
Jan-Aug 2016
Jan-Aug 2015
YoY
2016 proj.
Toyota
6,686,122
6,599,643
1.3%
10,029,000
Volkswagen
6,662,700
6,545,600
1.8%
9,994,000
GM
6,346,667
6,400,000
-0.8%
9,520,000
Source: Company data. GM, VW: Deliveries. Toyota: Production. Blue: Estimate
Toyota produced 6.69 million units in the first eight months of the year, the company said in a statement today. Volkswagen recently announced that it delivered 6.66 million vehicles in the same period. Using unrounded numbers, Toyota’s deliveries now are 23,422 ahead of Volkswagen’s – a whisker-thin lead, considering that both make 10 million cars and trucks a year.
Note: This analysis tracks production, not sales, because this is how the world automaker umbrella organization OICAranks automakers.
Toyota reports both sales and production, this takes production. Volkswagen reports “deliveries” to wholesale – which is, at least for this exercise, close enough to production. GM did the same, but begun reporting retail sales for the Chinese market.
Source: Forbes