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Toyota renting ships to store unsold cars

 
3 3,415 views Feb 27, 2009

The inventory backlog is becoming so huge it's actually cost-effective to create floating parking lots

The inventory backlog is becoming so huge it's actually cost-effective to create floating parking lots

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Strange times are on the car industry, perhaps none stranger than what's facing Toyota right now with its European inventory backlog. Short of storage space for cars that are unsold in the EU, Toyota has taken to floating the cars just off the shore of Sweden in a rented container ship.

The seriousness of the situation is outweighed only by its absurdity. Over 12,000 cars are already stored in the port at Malmo. With unsold capacity at least 2,500 cars above that mark, Toyota had to do something, says BusinessWeek.

"It's an emergency measure that we had to take due to storage space issues," said Toyota spokesperson Anne Gaublomme."We hope to keep the time of this measure as short as possible, as we are continuously adapting our production level."

How long it might take to even out the nearly 15,000-car oversupply wasn't revealed, however. In the mean time, the cars will continue to float around the harbor. Now that the overflow is so great that ship rental has become necessary, Toyota can be expected to refrain from sending even more vehicles to the area.

The backlog is the result of a drop in exports of 60% in January, and the previously strong yen's effect on prices hasn't helped.



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Comments (3)

  1. ma_samuelesm avatar samuelesm Posted: 2/27/2009 7:06pm PST

    This is a good example of car manufacturers needing to produce just a little over enough cars.
     
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  2. ma_mburleigh8 avatar mburleigh8 Posted: 2/28/2009 5:19pm PST

    OO geez, i think they need to put a freez on production for a little while.
     
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  3. By  pda accessories Posted: 11/26/2009 4:51am PST

    There is a cubic buttload of unused shipping containers right now just sitting around stacked and empty.
    You could probably roll a couple Toyotas into each one and then stack 'em Wall-e style.
     
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