Toyota Aims for 70%+ Parts Commonality

Toyota Motor Corp.'s "new global architecture" (NGA) strategy targets a lineup of vehicles that share 70%-80% of their parts, Automotive News reports.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda says the plan is essential to its goal of becoming the first carmaker to sell more than 10 million vehicles in a year. Mitsuhisa Kato, who heads the company's global R&D effort, has described the initiative as taking the cost-saving virtues of commonality to a "higher level."

Toyota says the first cars it will develop under NGA will be three front-drive platforms due in 2015. Models riding on those chassis will share 20%-30% of their components, according to the company.

Toyota said earlier that it hopes to reduce costs by accepting global performance standards for more parts rather than imposing its own specifications.

Expanding the ability to share parts should speed product development and reduce component and production costs. AN says Toyota will group the launches of future same-platform models so it can engineer them simultaneously. The company insists that the process also will enable it to differentiate the resulting vehicles.