Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest carmaker, is targeting sales and profitability gains in Europe and Russia next year on the strength of its increasingly popular hybrid models.
The manufacturer's plants in France, the U.K. and Turkey are at full capacity, putting the company on track for its European production to account for 75 percent of the cars it sells in the region by 2015, Didier Leroy, head of the Toyota Motor Europe division, said in an interview. The focus is on ensuring that strategy serves to boost earnings, he said.
"The real challenge for us is to be permanently asking ourselves whether we're on track with profitable growth," Leroy said at his office in Brussels. "There's absolutely no doubt about the fact that we'll be making more sales and profit next year than this."