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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Toyota Motor has topped the world’s carmaker rankings. It sold the most passenger cars in the world last year, keeping its position ahead of Volkswagen. But investors should not dismiss Toyota’s looming reputational problems. Those include brand damage from a series of testing scandals and the fact it has fallen behind rivals in the electric car race.
Sales in North America and Europe were especially strong. They pushed global group sales, including subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor and Hino Motors, up 7 per cent to a record 11.2mn cars last year, the company said on Tuesday. Output grew 9 per cent to 11.5mn.
But of that total just a tiny fraction, about 104,000 cars, were battery electric cars. While Toyota has promised to turbocharge sales of its fully electric cars in the coming years, the pace of growth here has been slow. A seeming lack of sense of…