Toyota News: Toyota and Suzuki Form A New Alliance

[Drew Dowdell]

Toyota and Suzuki have announce plans to formalize a technology alliance.  Suzuki will purchase approximately $454 million of Toyota stock while Toyota will acquire approximately $908 million in Suzuki shares for a 4.94 percent stake in the company. 

The two companies will share technology and platforms.  Toyota will provide technology for electrification while Suzuki will provide platforms for small vehicles.   Both companies will collaborate in the area of autonomous driving technology.

The two companies already have an agreement where Toyota will provide Suzuki badged variants of the RAV-4 and Corolla Estate for the European market, while a Suzuki model will be built at Toyota's Derbyshire plant in the UK. Toyota will get Suzuki's new compact vehicle engines for the Euro market, while both will co-develop hybrid vehicles for the Indian market. 

From the sounds of it, none of the technology swap will be seen here in the U.S., but it does make us wonder about the small car agreement that Toyota has with Mazda to build the Toyota Yaris.

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[riviera74]

What does Suzuki have that Toyota does not have in house?  Seems unnecessary to me.

[Robert Hall]

Suzuki builds a lot of Kei cars and tiny cheap cars in developing markets...maybe Toyota wants more of that...

[Drew Dowdell]

6 minutes ago, riviera74 said:

What does Suzuki have that Toyota does not have in house?  Seems unnecessary to me.

It seems like Toyota doesn't want to build smaller cars themselves anymore (smaller than Corolla).  They're currently outsourcing some of that to Mazda, but perhaps that will go to Suzuki for the next generation.  The Swift would have made a good Yaris. 

Also, Suzuki does really well with small engines. Not that Toyota can't, but perhaps they don't see the ROI on doing it themselves when they can get a perfectly good small engine from a partner like Suzuki or Mazda. 

[G. David Felt]

Subcompact to micro cars seems to be Suzuki's area of positive auto sales, I see Toyota would rather badge those auto's than build them themselves.

[daves87rs]

Mapmaker you wonder if any models might hit the US.....

[Drew Dowdell]

10 hours ago, daves87rs said:

Mapmaker you wonder if any models might hit the US.....

The only one I see would be a next generation Yaris built by Suzuki instead of Mazda. 

[regfootball]

that Corolla Estate is not bad.

[Drew Dowdell]

Toyota has their fingers in Suzuki, Mazda, Daihatsu now... I wonder why they just don't buy one of them outright.

[Robert Hall]

18 minutes ago, Drew Dowdell said:

Toyota has their fingers in Suzuki, Mazda, Daihatsu now... I wonder why they just don't buy one of them outright.

...and Subaru..

[Drew Dowdell]

13 minutes ago, Robert Hall said:

...and Subaru..

I knew I was forgetting one... but I was typing that while on a conference call.