TOKYO: Toyota President Akio Toyoda said Wednesday that any plans to build new assembly plants in the future would focus in emerging markets. Compared to domestic rivals Nissan Motor and Honda Motor, Toyota relies more heavily on exports and hence suffers more when the yen rises. Toyota said environmentally-friendly cars and emerging markets would be the two pillars of growth, adding that it plans to raise car sales in emerging markets to 50 percent of its global sales from the current 40 percent. As part of that push, Toyota said it would sell some 10 more hybrid cars by 2015. Once a front-runner in clean technology with its signature Prius hybrid, it faces intensifying competition as more global carmakers start selling hybrids and others like Nissan pushing mass adoption of a pure electric car.
