World’s most powerful auto executive steps into chairman role, company taps Lexus leader to run Toyota
In a shock shift of power at the world’s biggest carmaker, renowned CEO Akio Toyoda has stepped away from the role of CEO of Toyota after 14 years.
The 66-year-old Toyota veteran and grandson of Toyota Motor Corporation founder Kiichiro Toyoda will move across to become chairman of Toyota’s board of directors, replacing the retiring Takeshi Uchiyamada.
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The 53-year-old Koji Sato (below), who is currently the head of Gazoo Racing and Lexus, will assume the roles of CEO and president of Toyota.
“I love making cars,” said Sato in a statement.
“For that reason, I want to be a president who continues to make cars.
“I would like to show what kind of company Toyota should be through our cars. That’s what I want to do. Cars that are fun to drive and cars that support mobility.
“And cars in the future will evolve into the concept of mobility itself. Amid such, I hope to preserve the essential value of the car and propose new forms of mobility.”
Toyoda will sign off on a 14-career in Toyota’s top job, a period marked by continuing solidity from the globe’s biggest carmaker.
It was also a period plagued with difficulty; taking charge in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis, Toyoda also had to manage huge recall issues, the aftermath of the Fukushima earthquake and the COVID-19 period.
“This has been a rocky path requiring tremendous amounts of time to bear fruit, and one not understood or appreciated by those who focus on the short term,” said Toyoda.
However, the winds of change have caught up with the global behemoth in the last couple of years, with supply chain issues and a seeming reticence to take its place in the rapid shift to electrification that is sweeping the automotive world.
The enigmatic Toyoda-san promoted himself as a leader that would bring the fun back to the Toyota brand, whose success is steeped in building relatively simple, conservatively designed vehicles that set the standard for profit in the industry.
He was also the founding force behind the Gazoo brand in the early part of the century, which started life as an early online sales portal for secondhand cars – and which also happened to run its own race team, which allowed him to follow his passion of car racing.
Toyoda weathered many storms at the helm of the company, but none more fraught than the supply chain crisis that saw the company shed almost a million production slots in 2022 alone, and which has led to long waiting lists for customers right around the world.
He was also forced to repeatedly defend Toyota’s approach to electrification over the last 12 months, correctly pointing to Toyota’s dominance in the mild-hybrid space and its positive impact on carbon dioxide emissions globally.
Koji Sato, then, can be seen as Toyota’s way of attempting to redirect the ship with the implementation of a leader whose view of the company includes a more holistic position on mobility.
He has worked side-by-side with Toyoda for more than a decade and will inherit a company that has the job ahead of it to plot a course through the polar shift in mobility that is already upon it.
“I thought that the best way to further Toyota’s transformation would be for me to become chairman in support of a new president, and this led to today’s decision,” said Toyoda in a company livestream on Wednesday.
“I am a carmaker, through and through. I believe that’s how I have successfully transformed Toyota. However, a carmaker is all that I am. And I see that as my own limit.
“The new team under upcoming President Sato has a mission to transform Toyota into a mobility company.”
The changes will come into effect from April 1 this year.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://editorial.csnstatic.com/editors/tim-robson-author.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Tim Robson[/author_info] [/author]
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