System Failure Halts Toyota's Japanese Production

“Output was running at full capacity so there’s little additional room for production,” said Seiji Sugiura, an analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute.

Tuesday’s incident also had a knock-on effect. Group firm Toyota Industries said it has partially suspended operations at two engine plants due to the automaker’s glitch.

The virtual assistant’s help with route assistance and other nonemergency requests through the in-vehicle OnStar button frees up advisers to handle issues that need human intervention.

The Google technology also is present in chatbots that GM has placed on its corporate and vehicle brand websites, enabling conversational responses to consumers’ questions, the automaker said. GM and Google are piloting other uses for AI technology.

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GM said the Google-powered virtual assistant is now offered in most of its vehicles from the 2015 model year to present that have OnStar connected, and that it responds to more than 1 million customer requests each month in the U.S. and Canada.

Revenue dropped 14.8% to 8.77 billion yuan, as quarterly deliveries fell 6% to 23,520 vehicles, at the bottom of the company’s forecast. Gross margin continued to drop, down to 1% from 13% a year earlier and 1.5% in the previous quarter.

While senior executives earlier this year claimed to be “very confident” of doubling sales to 250,000 vehicles in 2023, Nio only managed to ship 54,561 cars in the first half — just over 20% of its annual goal. It also missed its annual target last year, and has been forced to delay investments in fixed assets, postpone research and development plans, and be more cautious on its overseas expansion.

Nio’s sluggish sales and unsatisfactory earnings have raised concerns over the future of the company, which three years ago was on the brink of collapse before a local government rescue. Now analysts are wondering how long a $738.5 million investment from Abu Dhabi’s CYVN Holdings LLC might last.

More recent figures point to some improvement. Nio delivered a record 20,462 units last month after the company cut prices, joining the price war engulfing the Chinese market, and rolled out two new versions of its cars in the space of a month. More than 10,000 of the cars shipped in July were the revamped ES6 unveiled in late-May.

The strong numbers were mainly attributable to rapid growth in the new energy vehicle business, the firm said in a stock filing.

Revenue in the first six months increased 72.72%, compared to the first half of 2022, according to the stock filing.

China’s top-selling car brand posted its best-ever quarterly sales results. Sales of passenger new energy vehicles in the second quarter were 700,244 units, up about 98% year-on-year, according to the company.

In comparison, U.S. rival Tesla reported deliveries of 466,140 vehicles globally for the second quarter.

China is the largest auto market in the world by sales and production. It is also the largest EV market in the world, and a key driver in the push toward electric cars.

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BYD is under pressure from a price competition among domestic rivals as well as Tesla.

Elon Musk’s EV-maker slashed the prices of its Model S and Model X in August as the company looked to gain market share amid rising competition in China. The additional cuts came the same month that Tesla dropped prices for its Model Y and Model 3.

Earlier this year, BYD and its domestic rivals such as Nio and Xpeng also cut prices.