FILE PHOTO: An employee of Toyota Motor Corp. is reflected on a side mirror on the assembly line of Mirai fuel cell vehicle (FCV) at the company’s Motomachi plant in Toyota, Aichi prefecture, Japan May 17, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese automakers saw a 34% fall in global vehicle sales in March when the coronavirus outbreak began to spread globally, and face a further tumble in the coming months.
Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), Nissan Motor Co (7201.T), Honda Motor Co (7267.T) and the country’s four other major automakers posted retail sales of around 1.82 million cars worldwide, down from around 2.77 million a year earlier.
For the financial year ended March, their combined global sales fell 7.3% to 26.5 million vehicles, their lowest in 4 years, Reuters calculations showed based on individual automaker sales figures announced on Tuesday.
Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; editing by Jason Neely