Raf Schuermans has been Technical Senior Manager – Advanced Powertrain at Toyota Motor Europe since 2018. In this role, he is in charge of advanced technology scouting for automotive traction motors in the area of electromagnetic performance, cooling, production processes, sustainability etc. Prior to this, for over 4 years, he has been in charge of future drivetrain technologies in the area of Efficiency, Lightweight, Thermal Management and Electric Motors for automotive traction, and since 1997, he has been in various positions in Powertrain R&D at Toyota Motor Europe in Belgium, being among others Department Manager of Transmission Design, responsible mainly for projects for manual transmissions mass production. Before joining Toyota Motor Europe, Raf Schuermans worked for 10 years as transmission engineer at the Volvo Car Corporation.

Toyota first began selling cars in Europe under an official distributor agreement in 1963. Since then, the company has matured into the leading Japanese car manufacturer in this highly competitive market. Toyota directly and indirectly employs around 94,000 people in Europe and has invested over EUR 9 billion since 1990. Toyota’s operations in Europe are supported by a network of 30 National Marketing and Sales Companies across 53 countries, a total of around 3,000 sales outlets, and nine manufacturing plants.