Toyota cuts sales forecast

By Chang-Ran Kim, Asia autos correspondent

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp cut its 2009 vehicle sales forecast by nearly 7 percent as high fuel prices hammer demand for large cars and pickup trucks, and said it will speed up the rollout of hybrid and electric cars as their popularity grows.

The weaker outlook from the world's most profitable carmaker weighed on shares of European rivals and highlighted an increasingly difficult environment, where orders in the United States and Western Europe for high-margin, gas-thirsty vehicles is slumping.

Toyota said on Thursday it expects to sell about 9.7 million vehicles next year including its Daihatsu Motor Co and Hino Motors Ltd units. It had previously forecast sales of 10.4 million vehicles. No carmaker has yet passed the 10 million annual unit sales milestone.

"We are looking at the current shift towards fuel-efficient cars (in the United States) as a structural change in demand," Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe told a news conference. "We intend to respond quickly and flexibly to this environment."

As part of those efforts, Toyota said it would move forward the launch of a "plug-in" version of its Prius gasoline-electric hybrid car, which can recharged through an electric socket. It will be available to fleet customers at the end of next year, from earlier plans of 2010.

Toyota also said it would speed up the development of vehicles that run only on electricity with the aim of mass-producing them in the early part of next decade. Road tests for the current prototype, called "e-com", had ended in 2006.

Rival Nissan Motor Co is aggressively promoting plans to commercialize pure electric cars, though Toyota stressed that such cars, including its own, would be suited only for short-distance travel for the time being given the limitations on battery storage technology and recharging infrastructure.

U.S. giant General Motors Corp, meanwhile, is looking to beat Toyota to the punch with its all-electric Chevy Volt. GM expects to have a showroom-ready version by this year, according to people familiar with the project.

REVISION "CAN'T BE HELPED"

Toyota's forecast revision was expected after it trimmed its 2008 sales projection last month, calling for growth of just 1 percent to 9.5 million units.

For North America, the world's biggest auto market, Toyota lowered its 2009 sales forecast to 2.7 million vehicles from 3 million. It dropped Mexico from its definition of North America.

Forecasts were lowered by 150,000 vehicles each for Europe, Japan, and the rest of Asia.

"For the last few months the company began to say its previous target was impossible and they've scaled back gradually, so everybody's used to the idea," said Nagayuki Yamagishi, strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities.

"Everyone just thinks 'it can't be helped.'"

Toyota shares ended flat after the news, mirroring the Nikkei average, but European traders said the revision weighed on Daimler and BMW shares, which fell 2.8 percent and 2 percent, respectively, in Germany.