Toyota president Akio Toyoda announced that the Japanese brand will not offer ultra-cheap cars in order to boost its sales in emerging markets. Apparently, Toyoda wants to be sure that the customers will receive a certain level of reliability and doesn’t want to disappoint them after it managed to clean its image due to its biggest recall.
Still, the competition has other plans as Nissan just announced the revival of the Datsun brand, while a German magazine reported that Volkswagen is also planning a low-cost car brand. Toyota president also added that in order to grow sustainably, it has to make a certain level of profit on cars, no matter how big or small they are.
Still, Toyota doesn’t have the ability to make cars for $6,000 like Tata Motors. "We won't risk sacrificing quality simply to meet a certain price range," he said.
For those who don’t know, in order to boost their sales, car manufacturers are eyeing low-cost cars to drive sales growth in emerging markets such as as Brazil, Russia, India and China. Toyota has created the Etios model for the Indian market but according to analysts its price of 400,000 rupees ($7,800) is still high to challenge cut-price stalwarts such as Maruti Suzuki.
