World’s Largest Automakers 2013: No Change Seen By Year-End

TTAC continues its coverage of the race for World's Largest Automaker. Last year, around this time, we did not do too badly with our guesstimate that Toyota would finish the year as #1, GM as #2, and Volkswagen as #3. Let's see how we'll do this year. Tracking the world's largest automakers Jan-Apr 2013, full year forecast 4M'13 4M'12 YoY Proj '13 Toyota 3,349,614 3,498,731 -4.3% 10,049,000 GM 3,148,000 3,038,000 3.6% 9,444,000 Volkswagen 3,050,000 2,890,000 5.5% 9,150,000 Black: Company data. Blue: Projection, based on last available Toyota, GM: Production. VW: Deliveries. Crude forecast by TTAC This year, our admittedly crude estimate says that nothing will change in the ranking.  The distances between the contestants most likely will get narrower. (The full year estimate is what it is: A very crude estimate, but good enough to establish a likely ranking.) Toyota published its April and YTD data today. From January through April, TMC made 3,349,614 units on a global basis.  That's down 4.3 percent, however it is down from a mad dash in early 2012 that tried (and succeeded) to recover from the effects of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In April 2012, production was up 50 percent. Our crude World'O'Meter says that Toyota might pierce the 10 million units this year, Akio Toyoda said three weeks ago that this is what he and TMC want to do. Volkswagen's deliveries were up 5.5 percent through April, its former breakneck pace is slowing due to the effects of the European contagion, but its trajectory remains steeper than that of GM. No new global data are available from GM, we extrapolated from  the Q1 numbers. from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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