{"id":173,"date":"2007-01-22T12:56:50","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T17:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/2007\/01\/22\/lean\/toyota-plans-ultra-inexpensive-car\/"},"modified":"2007-01-22T12:56:53","modified_gmt":"2007-01-22T17:56:53","slug":"toyota-plans-ultra-inexpensive-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/2007\/01\/22\/lean\/toyota-plans-ultra-inexpensive-car\/","title":{"rendered":"Toyota plans ultra-inexpensive car"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/news\/2007\/01\/22\/070122074327.pbtqfqv6.html\" title=\"reported in the news today\" target=\"_blank\">reported in the news today<\/a>, Toyota plans ultra-inexpensive car &#8211; Wow!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Toyota Motor Corp. plans to build a low-cost car undercutting Renault&#8217;s emerging-market Logan through a &#8220;radical&#8221; rethink in design and production, the president of the fast-growing Japanese automaker said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What is the <a href=\"http:\/\/renault-logan.eastrolog.com\/\" title=\"Logan from Renault\" target=\"_blank\">Logan from Renault<\/a>? (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dacia_Logan\" title=\"More information\" target=\"_blank\">More information<\/a> available at Wikipedia)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Renault Logan is the latest car to enter the super budget automobiles, and will compete with the best of the world&rsquo;s cheapest automobiles. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--adsense--><br \/>\nRenault aims to retail the car for Eur 5000 (about $6105) and the competition that its expected to take on are:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Targets for the Renault Logan include Rover&rsquo;s CityRover, Kia Picanto, Seat Arosa, Daihatsu Cuore, Daewoo Matiz and shortly the Volkswagen Fox. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So what does Toyota plan in order to take on the competition?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> &#8220;The focus is on low-cost technology,&#8221; Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe told Britain&#8217;s Financial Times newspaper in an interview published Monday.<br \/>\nHe declined to set a price for a low-cost car but said it would be &#8220;at least&#8221; less than the Logan. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Like I have said many times before, Toyota may come in above the Logan&#8217;s price to begin with in their first iteration but one can&#8217;t fault them for knowing what the market would support. And if you&#8217;re aiming to compete as the low-cost technology, they will quickly apply their TPS and continuous improvement methodology and push that price lower, lower with every continuing iteration.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s the principal idea outlined by Toyota&#8217;s CEO:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Watanabe said that Toyota could slash the price by targetting costs throughout production.<br \/>\n&#8220;Everything from design to production methods will be radically changed and we are thinking of a really ultra-low-cost way of designing, using ultra-low-cost materials, even developing new materials if necessary,&#8221; he said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Again, Toyota is focusing on its twin competencies of product design and production rather than advertising and financing to execute their strategy of competing in the low-cost car segment. Also consider their built-up experience in hybrids and whether hybrid power systems will get cheap enough to be put under the hood of a low-cost car.<br \/>\nNeedless to say that this announcement will sound a loud boom across the bow of US carmakers.<\/p>\n<p><!--adsense#adsense_imagebanner--><\/p>\n<p><small> Tags: <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Logan\">Logan<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Renault\">Renault<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Low-cost cars\">Low-cost cars<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Toyota enters low-cost car segment\">Toyota enters low-cost car segment<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Toyota\">Toyota<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Katsuaki Watanabe\">Katsuaki Watanabe<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As reported in the news today, Toyota plans ultra-inexpensive car &#8211; Wow! Toyota Motor Corp. plans to build a low-cost car undercutting Renault&#8217;s emerging-market Logan through a &#8220;radical&#8221; rethink in design and production, the president of the fast-growing Japanese automaker said. What is the Logan from Renault? (More information available at Wikipedia) The Renault Logan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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