ColdFusion - How Big is Toyota? (They’ve Owned 27% of Tesla Motors!)

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

Subscribe here: https://goo.gl/9FS8uF Check out the previous episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmc7aUVKCMA Become a Patron!: https://www.patreon.com/ColdFusion_TV Hi, welcome to ColdFusion (formerly known as ColdfusTion). Experience the cutting edge of the world around us in a fun relaxed atmosphere. Sources: https://www.toyota-industries.com/company/history/toyoda_sakichi/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-battery-could-make-its-way-to-cars-by-2020/ http://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/text/taking_on_the_automotive_business/chapter2/section5/item1.html https://carfromjapan.com/article/industry-knowledge/10-interesting-facts-about-toyota/ http://www.davesultimateautomotive.com/10-fun-interesting-amazing-toyota-facts/ https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/enthusiasts/20-surprising-facts-about-toyota/ss-BBD1gal https://gearheads.org/10-cool-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-toyota/ https://paultan.org/2017/09/20/era-of-boring-bland-toyotas-is-over-designer/ http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/toyota-changes-design-direction-20140114-30rvd.html //Soundtrack// 0:00 Ephemerals - You'll Never See Me Cry (Ambassadeurs Remix) 1:20 Slow Meadow - Hananel's Recovery 2:20 Owen – Places to Go 4:10 Endhel – Beginning 5:00 myk. - Dye Works 6:00 Grifta – Dawn 7:18 Pacific Coliseum - Ocean City 8:13 Mike Newman - I Don't Wanna (Original Mix) 9:49 3rd Core - Mindless And Broken (MJ Cole Mix) 10:42 Need a Name - Road to Berlin 12:42 Wild Nothing – Shadow 13:10 Burn Water - Hide » Google + | http://www.google.com/+coldfustion » Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/ColdFusionTV » My music | http://burnwater.bandcamp.com or » http://www.soundcloud.com/burnwater » https://www.patreon.com/ColdFusion_TV » Collection of music used in videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOrJJKW31OA Producer: Dagogo Altraide » Twitter | @ColdFusion_TV ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You are watching Cold Fusion TV. Hi, welcome to another Cold Fusion video. Toyota, one of the world's most recognizable brands. They're known to be affordable and reliable. In fact, I had a friend that didn't put any engine oil in his old corolla for years. He just said he forgot, and the car still ran fine. And then, there was that time that the original Top Gear crew tried to destroy a Toyota Hilux. They ran it into a tree,

drowned it, dropped a caravan on it, hit it with a wrecking ball, burnt it, lifted it onto the top of a building which then got demolished and it was still running after all of this. According to statistics from the manufacturer, as many as 80% of their cars sold in the last 20 years are still on the road. So it's clear that Toyota is well built and they are a common site in most places around the world, but how did the company start and what's the story behind it? How big are they and what are some lesser known facts about the world? Toyota. It's been a while since I've done a video on the How Big series, so let's take a look.

It all begins in the most humble way, a son who found the inspiration to make his mother's life a little bit easier. The story starts with Sikichi Toyota, who was born in 1867 in the city of Kusai. Growing up, Sikichi was inspired by a self-help book. In the book was a description of an inventor who created motorized textile machinery, while coming home one day after working for his father's carpentry business, Toyota had noticed how hard his mother worked to weave textiles and in that moment he decided that a self-powered machine would make her life easier. Despite opposition from his father, he decided to dedicate all of his time to the project. In 1898, he submitted his patent of the Toyota Power Loom, a type of textile machine. It used a

one-horsepower oil motor and would be the first power loom in Japan. It quickly drew a claim and attention for its ability to reliably produce high-quality cotton. After catching the eye of a prominent businessman in May of 1906, Toyota founded the Toyota Loom Company as a joint stock venture. But it wasn't all smooth sailing. In 1910, he was forced to resign after Japan had a major recession. To blow off some steam, Sakeechi took a trip to the US and Europe. He was amazed at the level of technological advancement, but it was the automobile in particular that caught his attention. Inspired, he decided to return to Japan and start a new company with his son, Kichira. Although the new company was named Toyota Spinning and Weaving, Sikichi still had his

mind on the automobile. In 1929, he sold the rights to his powered weaving machine for one million yen and gave the money to his son only on the one condition that he would use the money to create Japan's own automobile. In the beginning, Kichira was unsure, but after he was, he was a After a trip to the US to observe the manufacturing process, he was convinced that it was possible. Around the same time, the Japanese government was offering incentives for entrepreneurs to create a Japanese car. Kichiro took this as a sign and began diversifying away from the textile industry and into the automotive industry. In 1932, two prototype cars were released. This fast adaptation to change proved to be a decision that would alter the course of history.

In the following year, the newly formed Toyota Automatic Loom Works dedicated all their efforts to produce cars. The first production cars rolled out in 1935 and the division became its own company, Toyota Motor Company, in 1937. The aim of Toyota was to be cheaper than the other cars imported by Ford or General Motors. The first cars were an instant success in Japan and Toyota was on its way. The vehicles were originally sold under the brand name Toyota with a D. This was after the name of the company's founder, but later of course this was changed to Toyota.

The word Toyota means fertile rice paddies, not something suitable for a car manufacturer in hindsight. Continuing with the momentum, in the late 1930s, Kichiro set up a research lab. His reasoning was very insightful. He stated, quote, I want to gradually get rid of this attitude of taking the easiest path by taking someone else's hard work. We have relied on the West until now. If we want to truly make Japan's industry independent, we have to cultivate that drive." After expanding to multiple production plants in the 1930s, the events of World War II in the 1940s almost destroyed the company, causing Kichiro to resign.

The next few years would be a bumpy road, but in a strange twist, it was the Korean War that saved Toyota. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy, but in the first few months of the Korean War, the United States ordered more than 5,000 vehicles from Toyota, reviving the company. In the 1950s, some managers noticed that American workers were nine times more productive as the Japanese. They discovered that the issue wasn't with the people, but the process. Throughout this decade, the company focused their efforts on increasing productivity by

streamlining their process to boost efficiency. With productivity beginning to increase, in 1955, they shifted their sights to the global market. Upon a visit to the US, the world's biggest market at the time, a Toyota executive noted that there were many small European cars alongside the larger US ones. He saw a problem. They were too expensive. As a reaction to this, Toyota built an affordable car and pushed it into the US market. It was called the Toyo Pet Crown. The company's excitement was at a fever pitch. This was going to be their big break. As it turns out, it was a complete disaster, only 300 cars of assault. The main reason was that they had misunderstood American roads.

For Japanese roads, the crown was fine, but when it was put on the US highways, it would overheat, lose power and drink way too much fuel. Toyota had to go back to the drawing board. The result was Toyota's total quality control, a complete process that included everything from the staff's level of enjoyment to a drive for constant improvement. After this, they exported globally. The Export strategy was something called Genchi Bunbutzhu. It means go to the source and get the facts to make the right decision. After much research of external markets, their cars began to succeed overseas.

1966 would see the release of the Toyota Corolla, one of the most popular cars of all time. What's a Corolla? A new low-priced economy car. From Toyota! The oil crisis of the 1970s would further propel the need for smaller cars that were more efficient on fuel. We were selling cars like crazy. The next day, disaster. The oil embargo came along and couldn't sell big cars at all. As a matter of fact, people that had bought big cars were bringing them back and leaving them on the lots of here. I don't want it. I won't be able to buy gas for it.

But when the American manufacturers decided to go towards smaller cars, cost cutting meant that their quality, just couldn't match that of Toyota. From this time on, Toyota was unstoppable, with hits like the Camry in 1982 and the acclaimed Supra and MR2, and of course the Prius. In 1989, the company would move upmarket with their sub-brand Lexus. Over the decades, the lineup continued to grow. Now there's almost a hundred different models of Toyota cars globally. Today, Toyota is one of the most recognizable brands. Their cars are everywhere you look. on the road. So how big are they? In 2015 Toyota was the number one car manufacturer, but since then they've lost the top spot to VW. Toyota's production topped out at 10.2 million

cars last year, slightly less than VW's 10.3 million. Coming in at third was General Motors with 9.8 million cars produced. So a three-way battle between Germany, Japan, and the United States. How about that? Last year, Toyota made $248 billion in revenue and 20, $20.3 billion in profit. They have a total of $419 billion worth of assets. For comparison, Volkswagen made $123 billion in revenue last year, and $2.2 billion in profit. General Motors, $166 billion in revenue and $9 billion in profit. Toyota is the biggest company in Japan by market capitalization. They're almost twice as big as the second largest company, which is SoftBank. Toyota owns Daihatsu, Lexus, Heinz, They have a 16.7% stake in Subaru, a 6% stake in Isuzu.

Most surprisingly, up until 2016, Toyota had a 10% stake in Tesla, but they sold it as the companies began to become competitors. The Japanese firm also owns Kyoho Kai Group, which has another 334 companies under its name. They also own Red Entertainment, which is a video game developer. In addition to cars, Toyota is part owner of Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp, which will be creating a region, jet within the next year. The company has manufacturing plans in 27 countries including Russia, Turkey, Poland, Brazil, France, Canada, the UK and the US. They have 349,000 employees. Toyota is the ninth largest company on earth in terms of revenue. They also take part in philanthropic efforts in education, conservation, safety

and disaster relief. For example, the Toyota USA Foundation supports education and science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The Food Bank of New York City uses Toyota to improve their processes and operations. Toyota has also been making humanoid robots as early as 2004. The company also has banking, financing and leasing branches. Okay so we're almost at the end of the video but before we finish things off let's take a look at six surprising facts about Toyota. Number six. From 1966, Toyota has been manufacturing and selling a a corolla every 37 seconds on average. But if that's not enough, now they're selling one every 15 seconds. At 44 million sales, if you lined up all the corollas sold back to back,

it would make a line around the earth five times. These corollas have collectively driven 50 round trips between the Earth and Sun. The corolla has been the best-selling nameplate since 1997. Number 5. The company has the highest number of global patents in the order industry at over 1,500. Annually, they spend $9 billion US dollars in R&D, and at times they've put as much as $1 million every hour just into research. If you remember, this goes back almost 100 years to Kachiri Toyota's philosophy. Some fruits of this research is a new solid state battery that could be in cars by 2020

and a hydrogen fuel cell car called the Toyota Miyari. Finally, after 20 years of research, there is a hydrogen fuel cell. car now. Number four. Toyota is one of the most global brands. While other big brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald's may top out at being in about 100 countries, Toyota is in over 170 countries. Number three.

Their automation pioneers. The company has been using robots in their plants since the 1970s. And today, Toyota uses their robots to help with medicinal and nursing support, along with the assistance of those with limited mobility. Two. The Prius is the best-selling hybrid of all time. Since 1997, they've sold over 6 million cars. Number 1.

In 2017, Fortune named Toyota as one of the world's most admired companies, three years in a row. They've also won the winning title of number one vehicle company three years in a row. For those of you wondering, Toyota Automatic Loomworks still exist today. The now called Toyota Industries Corporation, another world's largest manufacturer of forklifts. Toyota are also still in the textile industry, creating computerized automatic looms and sewing machines. It's pretty cool that the company's roots still exist today. So there you have it. From watching his mother work too hard and having the idea to make her life easier, all the way to being one of the largest car manufacturers the world has ever seen.

When you really think about it, there's no way of knowing where a simple spark of inspiration will take you. So next time you see a Toyota on the road, have a bit of a think about that. Anyway, thanks for watching. This has been to Gogo. You've been watching Cold Fusion. If you've just stumbled across this channel, feel free to subscribe. All right, so I'll catch you again soon for the next video. Cheers, guys. Have a good one.