Jan. 26 (UPI) — Toyota on Thursday announced that CEO and President Akio Toyoda will step down this spring.
Toyoda will leave those roles April 1 and become chairman of the board, while Toyota Chief Branding Officer Koji Sato will become the company’s new CEO.
Takeshi Uhciyamada, the current chairman of the board, will also leave the company, saying in a translated press conference that the “current Toyota structural change has been triggered by resignation.” He added he had considered the timing of his retirement for “some time.”
“The foundation for passing the baton to the next generation has been laid,” Uhciyamada said.
In the webcast, Toyoda, the grandson of Toyota’s founder, said the 13 years he spent at the helm of the company “have been a period of struggle” noting that the company “fell into the red” shortly after he became CEO and faced a series of crises “that threatened our survival.”
“I thought the best way to further Toyota’s transformation would be for me to become chairman in support of a new person, and this led to today’s decision,” Toyoda said.
Sato joined Toyota in 1992 and became chief engineer of Lexus International Co. in January 2016. He was promoted to executive general manager at Lexus in April 2017. In 2019 he became executive vice president of Lexus International Co.
He said the company would look to focus on “energy security” and efforts to achieve carbon neutrality moving forward, while also continuing to innovate its design.
“Cars in the future will evolve in the concept of mobility itself. Amid such, I hope to preserve the essential value of the car and propose new forms of mobility,” he said.