Toyota to Lose $15 Billion This Quarter

You can say “oh well, this is just the lockdown – of course no one’s buying cars.”

But who is going to have the money to buy a car if the lockdown ever ends? Certainly, no one is going to be buying new cars.

This is a staple of business which is just going to be wiped out.

Reuters:

Toyota Motor Corp said on Tuesday it expects profit to drop by 80% to its lowest in nine years, as Japan’s biggest automaker grapples with the impact of the novel coronavirus which has sapped global demand for vehicles.

The expected damage to Toyota’s bottom line highlights how carmakers will struggle to recover from the virus in the coming months as they gradually restart factories after curbs on public movement prevented workers in many countries from commuting.

The industry expects limited output due to fractured supply chains and social distancing measures at plants, along with weak demand as job losses and concern about an economic downturn weigh on consumer spending on major purchases like cars.

Toyota, one of the world’s most profitable automakers, expects to take a whopping 1.5 trillion yen ($13.95 billion) hit from a fall in global vehicle sales this year due largely to the virus, yet it still expects to eke out an operating profit of 500 billion yen in the year to March.

“The coronavirus has dealt us a bigger shock than the 2008 global financial crisis,” Toyota President Akio Toyoda said at a livestreamed media briefing.

I wish we could stop talking about the 2008 financial crisis.

That isn’t relevant.

This is going to be thousands of times worse than that, and even the hoaxsters are admitting that at this point.

This economic collapse is going to be the worst crisis the world has ever experienced, period.

There is no coming back from it.