There are large manufacturers that are moving to fight in the most humble steps in emerging markets such as the movement of General Motors (creating low-cost brand Baojun), Nissan (Datsun to revive low cost) and Volkswagen (to create a low cost new brand).
Right now Toyota is the world’s third largest, behind General Motors and VAG, and natural disasters in Japan and Thailand affected their factories through the supply chain.
“We are a manufacturer of complete cars” Akio Toyoda told reporters in Tokyo. His business group is not going to fight with too cheap cars, do not believe they can maintain their values, which are reliability and quality. They are giving up a portion of the cake, and they know it.
The middle and upper class are sufficient
For example, only in the case of China, there are 1,400 million people, but only want to focus on 200-300 million. That figure is equivalent to the U.S. market, and it is big enough. So give up low-cost cars even with the sub Daihatsu.
Lets say that the most basic is designed to manufacture a car like the Toyota Etios exclusively for the Indian market. Its price is 400,000 rupees, and is above opponents as Mahindra Verito (a Dacia Logan), cheaper. It is their war, and hence do not want to lose. On the other hand, will focus on more affluent customers.
After the crisis of case Pedalgate and scandals in reliability and recall operations, Toyota has taken very seriously reinforce those values it claims to defend, apart from the hackneyed ecology and even re-do something minimally sports. Being consistent with this policy, low cost cars do not fit into the equation.
After all, the low cost does not imply any advantages, there we have the case of the Tata Nano and the thump that has stuck in sales, well below what was expected of it. It was called to be the Ford T in emerging markets in the Century XXI, but the ball is deflating. Furthermore, it is also about making money.
The very low-cost cars with lower benefits, and that forces you to create economies of scale, high volume, little or no investment in R&D, manufacturing in emerging. The brand claims that even in Thailand manufacturing standards are as the Japanese, but it is also true that they say that all manufacturers.
