Akio Toyoda, the CEO and President of Toyota, and the grandson of Toyota founder Sakichi Toyoda, is stepping down.
The 66-year-old confirmed car nut moves to Chairman of the Board in a Toyota reshuffle, having originally been made CEO back in 2009. But Toyota isn’t looking outside the company to replace him. Toyoda’s old job will be filled by Koji Sato, who currently serves as Chief Branding Officer and President of both Lexus and Gazoo Racing.
Toyoda oversaw Toyota’s rise to become the world’s biggest automaker, but it hasn’t always been plain sailing. The occasional racer also had to deal with a global recession, some embarrassingly large-scale recalls and, more recently, the semiconductor crisis that limited the company’s production ambitions.
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And despite heading a company that pioneered hybrid technology with the first two generations of the Toyota Prius, Toyoda seemed slow to respond to the car industry’s move towards full EVs. As late as last December, Toyoda said he was still not convinced that car companies should be going all-in on electric cars, believing that customers should have more options, including hybrids and hydrogen vehicles.
“I thought the best way to further Toyota’s transformation would be for me to become Chairman in support of a new President, and this has led to today’s decision. Chairman Uchiyamada has long supported me in all imaginable ways,” Toyoda said in a webcast, CNBC reported.
“In retrospect, these 13 years have been a period of struggling to survive one day after the next, and that is my honest feeling,” he added.