Toyota Expects to Sell 200,000 Tundras Annually in US
08 August 2007
Reuters. Toyota Motor Corp. expects to sell 200,000 units per year of its new full-size Tundra pickup truck, despite a decline in the segment.
Sales of the new Tundra more than doubled in July 2007 from a year earlier, rising to 23,150 units. In July, Toyota sold 16,062 Prius hybrids.
Toyota has marketed the Tundra as a fully capable work truck and has called the vehicle its most important product launch to date.
...Lentz said he expected that about 300,000 hybrid vehicles, which are capable of running on electric power alone for short distances, would be sold in the United States in 2007. Toyota would account for almost 250,000 of that total, he said.
“Most of that is really dominated by Prius. Prius will be almost 175,000 vehicles,” Lentz said.
GM and Ford are seriously pissed. This is the last segment that they dominate.
Posted by: jack | 08 August 2007 at 09:32 PM
Now if we can just get rid of the entire segment.
Posted by: Anthony | 08 August 2007 at 11:22 PM
Too bad the Tundra will help melt the tundra.
Posted by: BlackSun | 08 August 2007 at 11:40 PM
If it's any consolation, at least they sold more hybrids than they did Tundras.
Posted by: Travis Rassat | 09 August 2007 at 05:11 AM
200,000 units is roughly 10% of a 2 million unit Pick-up truck market. It is an improvement over the 120,000/year Toyota sold of the previous generation Tundra, but not a fly away success. Compare that with Ford alone who sells roughly 200,000 pick-ups in 4 months. I would suspect that Toyota was secretly expecting well over 200,000 Tundras in it's first year of this new model, but got side swiped by the same problems the other Automakers are having with large trucks--high gas prices. It takes a heck of a lot of Tundras to pay back a 1.4 Billion dollar manufacturing plant, (granted Toyota has the money, but still). I can't imagine that 200,000 feels like a slam dunk to Toyota in light of all that is occurring with the vehicle market.
To say that GM and Ford are shaken by this truck, I don't think they have been rattled yet, but I think they certainly have taken note of the added competition. The Tundra (I rode in one recently) is very nice and a large improvement over its predecessor, but I didn't feel it is a clear winner over the Chevy's, Fords, over even the Dodge's. The Chevy Silverado just blew my mind at this year's Auto Show--just extremely well done. The Detroit 3 still do trucks very well. And with diesels and 2-mode hybrids coming in a few years for the Detroit 1/2 ton pick-ups, if they aren't too expensive, they could make some in-roads to more sales that Toyota will have to compete for.
I've said this before on this site...Toyota really could have shown some true allegiance to fuel efficiency by introducing a Hybrid Tundra rather than the thirsty 5.7L V8. I guess they think the Prius is "good enough" for the greenies. It's sad to take note in the article what Toyota pushes the hardest-- it's not the Prius.
Posted by: Schmeltz | 09 August 2007 at 05:24 AM
I'm not impressed. It's just another iteration of the same pickup truck morphology, another reverse engineered American truck. There was no attempt to create a new form that would be more efficient from a materials, energy and space utilization standpoint. If this is the best Toyota can come up with, then they don't have any better clue than the rest of the industry, which has been caught in a time warp and can't see the future.
Posted by: Fred Schumacher | 09 August 2007 at 06:38 AM
Truck sales were down 4 % in the 1st 6 months. Concern about home sales and gas prices will push it down further.
Why is Toyota going for this market. Its the Truck craze that spoiled the image of Big-3. Toyota is going to suffer the same problem.
Also Toyota is giving $ 3,500 discount for the Tundra.
I dont know whether they are really making any profit.
Also the bigger vehicles like Sequoia, 4-Runner, Sienna have suffered sales declines. It will be better if they concentrate more on Hybrids, cars & crossovers.
Posted by: Max Reid | 10 August 2007 at 07:28 AM
Yes, Green Toyota selling a fuel swilling Truck, most of them with the ultra-low MPG 5.7 liter V-8 engine.
Even with the $4k plus of incentives Toyota has been forced to pile on the Tundra’s hood to meet their sales goals, they are still making a huge profit on each one. What great friends of the environment those Japanese multinational companies and their Whale Eating employees are.
Posted by: Yukaburbahoe | 10 August 2007 at 01:24 PM
What great friends of the environment those Japanese multinational companies and their Whale Eating employees are.
Racism isn't cool.
Posted by: jack | 10 August 2007 at 08:35 PM
Just the facts...
"How would they feel if we told Americans they couldn't hunt deer, or if we told Australians to stop hunting kangaroos?"
Hideki Moronuki
Fisheries Agency
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4106688.stm
Posted by: sulleny | 11 August 2007 at 08:41 AM
Last time I checked, neither Kangaroos nor any Deer Species in America were teetering on the edge of extinction. And don't give me the "we only hunt Minke Whales" BS. Genetic testing of whale meat purchased in Japan has proven Japan has been hunting several highly endangered species including Humpbacks. Morally bankrupt, unethical parts of all cultures should be eliminated and relegated to the ash-heap of history. Several species of whales probably won't make it, why can't you country just stop the slaughter before you add to the list?
Posted by: Yukaburbahoe | 11 August 2007 at 10:57 PM
What is interesting about Toyota's progression into the full size truck segment is that they are building a base for further development. The big three will take note and have to compete and improve. The Tundra is not perfection but it is a serious competitor. What the big 3 have to be concerned about are the future generations of the Tundra. Remember how Japenese automakers slowly developed their foothold within the U.S. market and now, between Toyota, Nissan and Honda, largely control the midside and small sedan segments witht the Camry, Corolla, Altima, Accord and Civic. Toyota is in this for the long haul. Laugh now about design and small imperfections, but in the long run they will be a serious player in the full size truck segment. 200,000 units is just a start.
Posted by: RC | 12 August 2007 at 12:36 PM
Greens do a disservice by lumping all GHG producers into one category of "polluters". One needs to separate consumption into two categories: vanity and production. There are legitimate _production_ reasons why someone drives a full-size truck. Most of the people that I know that own full-size trucks haul goods as part of their self-employment (e.g, construction, contractors, maintenance, farmers). In most production environments a short-wheelbase, low ride-height, low-duty cycle, low payload, low-power/torque vehicle is unacceptable.
The vanity phenomenon of urbanites buying full-size trucks is recent -- probably late-1990s (after the SUV-buying spree started), with the numbers from the US DOT that support that spike. That said, I don't know of any way short of Communist-era controls or moral suasion to have people be-prohibited-from/reconsider vanity purchases of full-size trucks.
Separate from the commentary of who needs a full-size truck, creating a serial-hybrid drivetrain for a full-size heavy-duty truck is a trick, requiring beefier and higher-performing components to withstand the power needs, duty cycle and durability issues of a production full-size truck use profile.
Toyota has the Yen available to do the research to hybridize a truck. However, unless that hybrid full-size truck performs exactly like a high-output gas or diesel engine, the production market will ignore it.
Posted by: km519 | 13 August 2007 at 04:49 AM