Honda Motor Co said on Friday it would further cut vehicle production in North America as it adjusts to plunging automobile demand.
Tokyo-based Honda is reducing production by another 119,000 vehicles for its fiscal year ending March 31, bringing expected production for the fiscal year to 1.3 million units.
Honda spokesman Ed Miller said the cuts will take place at five of Honda’s seven plants in the US and Canada. Employees at the plants will be given other tasks or can take paid or unpaid vacation time, he said. No layoffs will result from the cuts, he said.
Another Honda spokesman, Ron Lietzke, said production will be scaled back at the company’s engine plant in Anna, Ohio, and its transmission plant in Russells Point, Ohio.
Honda, the second-largest Japanese automaker, has been hurt by the global auto industry downturn, a product of slowing economic growth and tight credit markets around the world. Earlier this month, the automaker said its US sales fell 32 percent last month and 5 percent for the first 11 months of the year.
The company’s latest production cuts come on top of previous reductions of 56,000 vehicles for North America announced earlier in the fiscal year. Last month, Honda said it was cutting production in Japan and Europe by 61,000 vehicles.
Separately, Japanese auto giant Toyota is likely to suffer a US$1.1 billion loss for the second half of the current fiscal year because of a stronger yen and a global industry slump, news reports said yesterday.
Toyota Motor Corp is likely to incur an operating loss of some ¥100 billion (US$1.1 billion) for the six months to March next year, the Asahi Shimbun and Kyodo News said.
It would be Toyota’s first interim operating loss since the company introduced US accounting standards in 1999, Asahi said.
Last month, Toyota revised downward its net profit forecast to ¥550 billion in the current year to March, down from the ¥1.25 trillion previously projected and a decline of 68 percent from the previous year.
But the news reports said Toyota would further downgrade its sales and earnings projections as the company was battered by a sharp decline in global auto sales and the yen’s continued appreciation against the dollar.
Toyota assumed a foreign exchange rate of ¥100 against the dollar for the October to March period, but the dollar has fallen to around ¥90 due partly to concern about the future of the troubled US automakers.
STIMULUS PLANS: An official said that China would increase funding from special treasury bonds and expand another program focused on key strategic sectors China is to sharply increase funding from ultra-long treasury bonds this year to spur business investment and consumer-boosting initiatives, a state planner official told a news conference yesterday, as Beijing cranks up fiscal stimulus to revitalize its faltering economy. Special treasury bonds would be used to fund large-scale equipment upgrades and consumer goods trade-ins, said Yuan Da (袁達), deputy secretary-general of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. “The size of ultra-long special government bond funds will be sharply increased this year to intensify and expand the implementation of the two new initiatives,” Yuan said. Under the program launched last year, consumers can
Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp said they are leaving a global climate-banking group, becoming the latest Wall Street lenders to exit the coalition in the past month. In a statement, Citigroup said while it remains committed to achieving net zero emissions, it is exiting the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). Bank of America said separately on Tuesday that it is also leaving NZBA, adding that it would continue to work with clients on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The banks’ departure from NZBA follows Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Wells Fargo & Co. The largest US financial institutions are under increasing pressure
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
FUTURE TECH: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would give the keynote speech at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which is also expected to highlight autonomous vehicles Gadgets, robots and vehicles imbued with artificial intelligence (AI) would once again vie for attention at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, as vendors behind the scenes would seek ways to deal with tariffs threatened by US president-elect Donald Trump. The annual Consumer Electronics Show opens formally in Las Vegas tomorrow, but preceding days are packed with product announcements. AI would be a major theme of the show, along with autonomous vehicles ranging from tractors and boats to lawn mowers and golf club trollies. “Everybody is going to be talking about AI,” Creative Strategies Inc analyst Carolina Milanesi said. “From fridges to ovens
RSS