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Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

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11–20 of 264 posts

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This seems similar in a sense. They exist in very similar segments portions of their respective industries serving very similar customer demographics (in North America). Naturally there is going to be quite a bit of evolutionary convergence.

Are there though? Toyota is never perceived as a luxury brand, it is associated with quality, reliability and maintainability. Something that you can hardly say about Apple.

Something that you can hardly say about the industry*

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#13
I remember being shocked in the 90s at finding out the Toyota Corolla had the highest value retention of any car according to the Kelly Blue Book. And then there was the NUMMI joint-venture of Toyota and GM and the same exact cars that would come out of that factory would have different value retention. Obviously the GM car would depreciate more in value. Brand reputation clearly matters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI

Tesla has now taken over the NUMMI facilities.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#14
post #2

I've seen this news of Toyoda's passing posted across various social media channels and it's incredible to see how many Toyota owners have thanked him posthumously. I remember that when Steve Jobs died. This seems similar in a sense.

It's no coincidence. Jobs was influenced by quality philosophers like Toyoda, Deming, etc.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kib6uXQsxBA

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This seems similar in a sense. They exist in very similar segments portions of their respective industries serving very similar customer demographics (in North America). Naturally there is going to be quite a bit of evolutionary convergence.

Are there though? Toyota is never perceived as a luxury brand, it is associated with quality, reliability and maintainability. Something that you can hardly say about Apple.

They didn't distribute most of their luxury platforms worldwide.

E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Century

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This seems similar in a sense. They exist in very similar segments portions of their respective industries serving very similar customer demographics (in North America). Naturally there is going to be quite a bit of evolutionary convergence.

Are there though? Toyota is never perceived as a luxury brand, it is associated with quality, reliability and maintainability. Something that you can hardly say about Apple.

That's highly dependent upon which country you're in. In the United States, Toyota has a separate brand for their luxury offerings (Lexus), and so what you say is true. But in other countries, those nice Lexus cars are sold as Toyotas.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#18
Jeffrey Liker wrote a number of books on Toyota and his involvement(The Toyota Way for example).

What is so inspiring is seeing all the generations of Toyoda build upon each other's work creating something so respected in the industry and extends to many people's personal development based on their principles alone.

So many great things have come from their philosophy. What a titan.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#19
I had a Toyota. It was a great car, and a real testament to the engineering prowess Toyoda established.

I see very clear, very interesting Innovator's Dilemma vibes, though, in how widely they've missed the boat on EVs. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Toyota lose its dominance in the coming decade. It's sad, since the Prius was such a gamechanger.

Maybe the passing of the torch here will let them start to catch up.

Re: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This seems similar in a sense. They exist in very similar segments portions of their respective industries serving very similar customer demographics (in North America). Naturally there is going to be quite a bit of evolutionary convergence.

Are there though? Toyota is never perceived as a luxury brand, it is associated with quality, reliability and maintainability. Something that you can hardly say about Apple.

Apple doesn't prioritize reliability because that's not what their subset of upper middle class consumers want in a phone. Toyota doesn't prioritize cost or feature/performance parity because that's not what their subset of upper middle class consumers want in a vehicle.

They both make products that are about as high as you can go in their respective market segments without getting into pure luxury and conspicuous consumption type purchases and refuse to go down-market lest they sully their brand image. In both cases they lather it up with a pretext so buyers don't feel like they're indulging in a luxury purchase. In apple's case they tightly integrate the hardware and software to assure a homogeneous user experience. In Toyota's case they try and dominate the 3rd party rankings on reliability. Of course, when you compare to the "next best" think in their class, like a Google or Samsung flagship phone or a Honda Accord you'll find that the actual difference is razor thin and that not having any "value priced garbage products" is really what's doing the reputational heavy lifting. Not wading into value priced territory is also very useful to the great many of each brand's respective customers who are willing to pay a huge premium to not have to think about it. A Toyota product may be overpriced for it's features/performance but if you just want an A to B appliance in a particular form factor it will do so with minimal maintenance expense. You won't have to waste your precious brainpower thinking about an expensive 100k service or fiddling with some gimmick feature. And on the apple side of things their tight control over the hardware-software combo results in a pretty strong guarantee of a high minimum user experience. If you just want a "nice phone" and don't wanna think about software versions, various flavors of android OS and stuff like that you can simply buy whatever iphone is in your budget? Is it the nicest phone in your budget, no. But you didn't have to waste precious brain-power comparing all the various Android options.

Basically they both charge a premium for products that "just work" and they refuse to get into market niches where they can't do that, much to the benefit of their brand image.

The above applies to North America only. Toyota makes a more diverse set of stuff globally and Apple doesn't dominate the same buyer demographics globally.

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