Toyota $TM Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. It is one of the largest vehicle manufacturers in the world by annual production and sales volume, with a lineup spanning passenger cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, and commercial vehicles sold under the Toyota and Lexus brands, among others.
The company was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda, building on an automatic loom business established by his father, Sakichi Toyoda. The Toyoda family spun off the automotive operation as a separate enterprise and renamed it Toyota — a change made partly for branding reasons and because the new spelling required fewer brush strokes in Japanese. Kiichiro Toyoda's ambition was to develop a domestic Japanese car industry capable of competing with American and European manufacturers.
Toyota is best known for two things in the business world: the Toyota Production System and the Prius. The Toyota Production System, developed in the decades after World War II, introduced the principles of lean manufacturing — eliminating waste, building quality into the production process, and producing only what is needed when it is needed. This approach, often called just-in-time manufacturing, became a global standard studied and adopted across industries well beyond automotive.
The Prius, launched in Japan in 1997 and globally in 2001, was the first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle and established Toyota as an early leader in fuel-efficient and low-emission powertrains. The company has since expanded its hybrid technology across much of its lineup and invested in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, most notably the Mirai sedan.
