Toyota, Japan | featured news

Toyota has surged back from a downturn following the natural disasters in Japan last year and is expecting to sell 23 percent more vehicles than it did in 2011.

Toyota over the weekend broke ground for a technical center near Shanghai that will prepare for shifting production to China of tightly guarded technology used in its hybrids and other alternative-energy vehicles—but not its latest technology.

Toyota Motor Co may slip to No. 3 in the automaker production rankings behind General Motors and Volkswagen due to Japan's earthquake and nuclear crisis, which slashed local output by almost two-thirds in March alone.

Toyota and Nissan they will resume production at all factories in Japan in mid-to-late April at about half their normal pace, joining Honda in an industrywide move to restart production halted by the March 11 earthquake.

Toyota is recalling 1.53 million Lexus, Avalon and other models, mostly in the U.S. and Japan, for brake fluid and fuel pump problems, the latest in a string of quality problems for the world's No. 1 automaker.

Toyota started recalling more than 90,000 luxury Lexus and Crown vehicles Monday in Japan over defective engines - the latest setback for the automaker beset with quality problems.

U.S. regulators launched a preliminary investigation into reported steering problems on the Corolla sedan on Wednesday as Toyota Motor Corp faced questions from U.S. lawmakers on whether it had ignored red flags on safety before a wave of vehicle recalls.

Toyota Motor Corp. got 180,000 orders for the new Prius hybrid in Japan in just a month, far surpassing its target of 10,000 vehicles in monthly sales, the automaker said Friday.

The third-generation Prius, which rolled out a month ago, has been a big hit here, partly because of tax-breaks and other new government incentives that are meant to perk growth during the nation's downturn.