A new Toyota US plant is to be constructed to meet manufacturing requirements in the US and Mexico. It was announced Friday that a new Toyota trucks plant is to be set up in Mexico. Toyota Tacoma pickup trucks are currently manufactured in San Antonio and Baja California (both in Mexico). These two plants are struggling to meet the demand for the Corollas and Tacomas.
By moving Tacoma production from Baja to a new US car factory in Guanajuato, Mexico, the company will enable the Baja plant to focus on SUV production. In addition to this, Toyota is involved in a joint venture with Japanese competitor Mazda. This is to build a factory in the US for the production of small cars and SUVs. Under the Toyota-Mazda JV, Toyota will get 5% of Mazda shares. The new plant is scheduled to be completed by 2020.
Toyota said Friday that it was moving some of its production of Tacoma pickup trucks to a new plant in Guanajuato, Mexico. These have generally been manufactured in San Antonio Texas and Baja California in Mexico). The decision to move production was agreed as part of its joint venture with Mazda. Production of the Corolla sedan will be transferred to the new plant in the US. The location of this plant has yet to be made public.
The fundamental reason for these changes is that the Texan and Mexican plants in San Antonio and Baja California are working at maximum capacity. Rather than attempt to extend this capacity, it was deemed best to build two new plants. One in Guanajuato in Mexico for the pickup trucks and another in the US for Toyota SUVs and small Mazda cars.
This new American Toyota plant will not only manufacture the new Corolla SUV, but also a Mazda compact vehicle. This is said to be a utility vehicle, though it has yet to be named.
Toyota has stated that the new Guanajuato plant will have no effect on the company’s plants in Baja California and Texas. It is intended to ease the workload on these two plants which are currently overstrained by its current workload. The new Toyota US plant is intended to construct new Mazda compact cars and Toyota SUVs.
The Texas plant is the only unit manufacturing the Tundra fully sized pickup truck. It also makes Tacomas. It has been manufacturing over 230,000 vehicles each year since 2015 and is now overworked. This is more than the 200,000 vehicles it was designed to build each year.
The various decisions made by Toyota have been intended to resolve Toyota’s own problem regarding a lack of further manufacturing capacity in its Mexican and Texan plants. It has also attempted to address President Trumps issue with Mexico by building a new plant in the US for small cars and SUVs. Whether or not the new Toyota US plant will be successful in averting the high import taxes threatened by Trump remains to be seen.
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