Japanese manufacturers increased their global production in May, except for Toyota, Nissan, and Subaru.
These were the only three to reduce their global production volume, in contrast to the positive figures recorded by Mazda, Suzuki, and Honda, according to data published by the companies and compiled by Europa Press.
During the fifth month of the year, Toyota assembled 812,191 vehicles across all its brands – Toyota, Lexus, Daihatsu, and Hino – representing a 4.1 per cent decrease compared to the figures from May 2024, leaving the cumulative global vehicle production of the manufacturer more than three percentage points below the records from a year ago.
In this case, the world’s leading vehicle manufacturer recorded weaker production in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela, considering the American continent region, although production in Europe plummeted by more than five per cent, mainly due to the poor performance of its plants in the United Kingdom.
More than 20 per cent of the vehicles sold by Toyota between January and May were electrified, totalling more than 1.5 million units sold globally.
Meanwhile, Nissan cut its production in April to 274,962 units, which means keeping them practically the same as the previous month, although the cumulative loss was nearly two per cent.
In this case, the production decline in Japan, especially in commercial vehicles, was responsible for these figures.
Similarly, local production also dragged down Subaru’s vehicle manufacturing, which fell by one per cent in the month to 79,580 units, representing the fourth consecutive monthly decline.
However, in the cumulative total since January, more than 367,000 Subaru cars were assembled, 1.2 per cent more than a year ago.
In contrast, the rest of the automakers showed an upward trend.
Mazda recorded a production increase of nearly nine per cent in May to 55,523 units, thanks to the strong performance of its factories outside Japan.
However, production since January has plummeted by more than 13 per cent to 301,985 units.
In the case of Suzuki, the manufacturer registered 294,386 units just in May, 108.3 per cent more than a year ago, exceeding 1.4 million vehicles since the beginning of the year.
Mitsubishi achieved similar figures after manufacturing nearly 74,000 units in May, 97.4 per cent more than in the same month of 2023, reaching a production volume of up to 400,913 vehicles during the first five months of 2024.
Likewise, in the case of Honda, global production fell for the first time in the quarter to 304,423 units. In the cumulative total for the year, production was nearly 1.6 million vehicles.
