“Of course, any individual could leave voluntarily, but we will never fire those employees against their will,” Takahiro Ijichi, a senior managing director, told American analysts in a conference call. “We have never done that.”

Image Toyota, which expects an operating loss of $3.9 billion in 2008, plans to introduce a new version of its hybrid Prius in May. Credit... Toru Yamanaka/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Toyota said it was still investing in hybrid-electric and compact vehicles and expected to introduce a new version of its popular Prius hybrid sedan in May. At the Detroit auto show last month, the automaker said it would start selling the first dedicated hybrid model in its Lexus luxury brand this summer.

Sales in the United States have dropped by a third in recent months, but the company is planning new product lineups for regions around the world that it hopes will fare better in the tighter economic environment.

“The financial problems have spread directly to the real economy,” Mitsuo Kinoshita, an executive vice president, told reporters. “We cannot tell what will happen next year but we hope we are now hitting the bottom.”

Analysts were not sure that was the case. “Toyota is going to get worse before it gets better,” said Tairiku Sakaguchi, an auto analyst at Shinko Securities in Tokyo. “The question is how quickly they can move to deal with inventory, excess production capacity and other problems.”

On Friday, Toyota said it was pressing forward with an overhaul guided by a special Emergency Profit Improvement Committee, which the company established in November.

Besides cutting costs by 10 percent, the company said it was canceling or postponing the construction of plants worldwide. It has already put off opening its plant in Blue Springs, Miss., that had been scheduled to begin production in 2010. Toyota executives said the factory would not be scrapped.