The Car Tech Lady

This year, the auto industry is expecting Japanese automaker Toyota to overtake General Motors to become the world's largest automaker.  After all, last year, General Motors and Toyota both announced their production goals for 2008 and Toyota has the bigger goal of the two automakers.

Recently, The Auto Channel announced that last year, General Motors sold almost the same number of vehicles as the Japanese automaker.  The report cited that the Detroit automaker sold 9,369,524 vehicles all over the world last year.  On the other hand, Toyota sold about 9,366,000 units of vehicles for the same period.  The Japanese automaker though said that they have sold 9.37 million vehicles around the world and that they would be posting detailed figures near the end of this month.

For the past decade or so, General Motors has seen its market share in the United States shrinking while Toyota's increased.  Although sales of General Motors in other parts of the world, it is barely covering their dropping share in the very important United States auto market.

General Motors though is wiling to fight off the challenge of Toyota.  Mike DiGiovanni, the automaker's chief analyst said:  "We are very competitive here at GM and obviously we'd like to win.  But I would say that what we are really focused on running our business for the long term profitably and growing. I think we are laying the foundation to grow where the growth is and laying the foundation to turn around in the U.S.  We are in this for the long run and we want to win."

If Toyota can indeed overtake General Motors in sales and output, it will put an end to the Detroit automaker's reign of 76 years.