Toyota announced today that it would not meet is goal of surpassing 10 million vehicles this year. The Japanese automaker originally targeted selling 10.4 million vehicles worldwide, but it has now cut that back to 9.7 million. The biggest cause for the scale back was blamed on slowing sales in North America. Sales in the U.S. are now expected to be around 2.7 million units, which is slightly down from the 2.83 million sold in 2007.

The U.S. does not carry the full blame for this new forecast. Europe is also having economic slowdowns, and that will effect production numbers at plants in Great Brittan and Poland. "The economic environment, crude oil prices as well as the material cost trend was not accurately forecasted by us, and we initially thought there would be a greater number of vehicles sold," said Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe.

While this is not good news for Toyota, they are still in an enviable position. Toyota already has large scale hybrid production in place, which should help the company recover quicker that its American rivals.

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