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Toyota suffers from rising Yen
By Yoann Besnard on 10 March 2008 | 
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During the Geneva Motor Show, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said the stronger yen was making conditions tougher for the automaker, specially on the American market.
The continuing decline in the dollar is making the company’s life hard but the Toyota CEO vowed to respond. One of the solution would be to build production facilities in the markets. Opening a new factory in the US would likely help the carmaker to offer competitively priced models while keeping the carmaker’s margin high.
Watanabe also said that the stricter 2012 EU emission regulations were a challenge for the Toyota and said that there was a lag between technical innovation to cut emissions and the time when such technology is affordable. in other words, Toyota might not be ready by 2012 and is slightly upset by the new regulations. The company had expressed a similar opinion with the future CAFE regulations that will apply in the US by 2020.
Watanabe also said that Toyota was continuing work to develop a low-cost vehicle -- not an ultra-low cost car such as the Nano of Tata but he had told company engineers he wanted to test-drive a concept car this year.
