Toyota to Design Low-Cost Cars for Russia

Toyota will design a new car for emerging markets, including Russia, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabew told Nikkei yesterday. It will be a low-cost car with the price of $6,000 to $7,000. The sales are slated to begin in 2010.

At stake is a model of the B-class, similar to Renault Logan, said Valery Tarakanov, who is an automobile industry’s analyst.

So, Toyota will soon become the fourth automobile consortium to sell low-cost cars here. Renault has launched the Logan assembly (from $11,000) at Moscow Autoframos. In September, Volkswagen announced the plans to assemble the ˆ7,000 cars in Russia and Nissan voiced similar intention past week (Nissan’s cars will cost from $5,000 to $7,000).

Watanabew didn’t specify the location of the plant to assemble a new model. But Toyota’s facilities in St. Petersburg are estimated to reach full production capacity exactly by 2010. Toyota will assemble its low-cost cars in Russia, Brazil, India and China, Tarakanov said, attributing this intention of the automobile giant to its desire to stop expansion of Chinese cars.

News source: kommersant.com