Toyota (TM) Forms A Group To Enhance In-Car User Experiences

Toyota Motor Corporation’s (NYSE:TM) holding company, Toyota Motor North America, reported to build a group in order to emphasize on the development of user experiences and new technologies. These new, advanced in-car technologies will be added to the Toyota and Lexus vehicles.

The newly built Connected Technologies will consist of roughly 100 positions and will comprise employees from the existing teams of connected vehicles, information systems and research and development. This new group lies in sync with the company’s One Toyota structure.

This new unit will contain Toyota’s planning, development, engineering and performance for connected service and hardware systems to enable it to develop and customize in-car experiences for the customers.

Toyota Motor Corp Ltd Ord Price and Consensus

Toyota Motor Corp Ltd Ord Price and Consensus | Toyota Motor Corp Ltd Ord Quote

Per Jim Lentz, CEO of Toyota Motor North America, this new group will lighten the burden for its North American teams to develop better connected in-car experience, one of the key deciding factors involved in customers’ auto purchase.

This Plano, TX-based, Connected Technologies group will be headed by Zack Hicks, who would currently double up as both the CIO of Toyota Motor North America and the CEO of Toyota Connected North America.

Over the years, Toyota has made several structural changes in order to deliver high-quality vehicles and improve the strength and autonomy of regional operations. Toyota altered its corporate structure to increase the efficiency of work processes, facilitate faster decision making and fortify functions that devise its objectives and strategies well. This restructuring converted it into a product-based organization from a function-based one.

Price Performance

Shares of Toyota have gained 4% in the last three months, marginally outperforming the industry’s 3.6% increase.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Toyota currently flaunts a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

A few other automobile stocks with the same bullish rank are Allison Transmission Holdings Inc. (NYSE:ALSN) , Ferrari N.V. (NYSE:RACE) and Volkswagen (DE:VOWG_p) AG (OTC:VLKAY) . You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Allison Transmission has a long-term growth rate of 11%.

Ferrari has a long-term growth rate of 14.1%.

Volkswagen has a long-term growth rate of 8.9%.

Zacks' 10-Minute Stock-Picking Secret

Since 1988, the Zacks system has more than doubled the S&P 500 with an average gain of +25% per year. With compounding, rebalancing, and exclusive of fees, it can turn thousands into millions of dollars.

But here's something even more remarkable: You can master this proven system without going to a single class or seminar. And then you can apply it to your portfolio in as little as 10 minutes a month.

Learn the secret >>