It didn’t take long for Akio Toyoda to make his presence felt as the new president of Toyota.

Only days after being announced as the successor to the top position in Toyota, Toyoda made it be known that it would probably take at least two more years for the company to recover from one of the most difficult times in its history.

As part of his strategy to improve Toyota’s business, Toyoda plans to veer away from producing volumes of cars at the expense of producing region-specific cars that would cater to certain areas only, as opposed to releasing a full line-up of vehicles to every region.

This strategy dramatically cuts costs for Toyota, which has been spending way too much money on cars that nobody is buying these days, a direct consequence of the global economic crisis that has plagued the auto industry.

The company’s losses over the past two years have been nothing short of staggering with reports that it has lost over 461 billion yen ($4.8 billion) in the past year alone. So far, the only reason for optimism Toyota can boast of these days is the strong showing of the Prius hybrid, which has had more than 180,000 orders in Japan alone.

Despite their current situation, Toyoda also stressed that the company is not looking into laying-off any of its employees, as what other manufacturers have been forced to do over the past few months.

The company still plans to retain its workforce so that when the market recovers, Toyota will also have the means to meet what they could hope as soaring demands then.

You can’t say that Toyoda isn’t being hands-on with his new role as Toyota president. He’s even made the ultimate sacrifice of dinging up for a 30% pay-cut to help alleviate the company’s expenses as it trudges through what has been one of the most difficult times in Toyota’s history.