Toyota in Japan to get 'lots of time off' in 2009 as car market crashes

"The last time Toyota Motor Corp. halted production at all its Japan plants was in August 1993."

NVDL: Hopefully people will buy more bicycles and scooters. By the way, driving cars is not such a great experience as many people think. It is expensive (to people and the environment), dangerous and anti-social (it promote a high degree of hyper-individualism, hyper-egoism and aggression). So lets embrace these changes. Those who can (like me) jog to work, even if you have a car.

clipped from www.businessday.co.za "We are coping with a slump in global sales," Toyota spokesman Hideaki Homma said today. "Demand in the world auto market is so depressed that every model is falling sharply in sales." Toyota said last year that it was stopping production at its 12 domestic plants for three days this month. But it decided on additional closures because of the global downturn. Toyota will stop output for six days next month and five days in March, it said. Overnight, Toyota reported that its US sales last month were down 37% year on year, a worse drop than Ford Motor Co.’s 32% drop and GM’s 31% slide. Sales of new vehicles in Japan fell to 3.2 million vehicles last year, the lowest in 34 years, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said yesterday. Last month, Toyota said it was slipping into its first operating loss in 70 years, expecting 150 billion yen ($1.66 billion ) of operating losses for the fiscal year ending March 2009.