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Toyota to Make Prius in the U.S.
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Jul 10, 2008 10:18pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Saturday, July 12, 2008 04:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By BILL VLASIC and NICK BUNKLEY
Published: July 11, 2008
DETROIT — Toyota acknowledged Thursday that, like its rival automakers in Detroit, it misjudged the drastic swing in the American market away from larger vehicles.
With sales of pickups and big S.U.V.’s tumbling, Toyota said it would shut down truck production at two United States plants for three months and consolidate its pickups into one factory next year.
The Japanese automaker also said it would begin making its Prius gas-electric hybrids in a new plant in Mississippi by late 2010 to meet demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles.
“It shows that Toyota is just as fallible as anybody else,” said Joseph Phillippi, a principal of AutoTrends Consulting. “They’re human after all.”
While overall vehicle sales have dropped 10 percent this year, sales of large pickups are down about 25 percent through June, and S.U.V. sales have fallen over 30 percent, according to data compiled by Ward’s Automotive Group.
The shift has hit Detroit’s Big Three much harder. General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler have responded by idling truck plants across North America and temporarily laying off tens of thousands of workers.
But Toyota’s announcement that it will suspend truck production at plants in Texas and Indiana was an unwelcome first for the Japanese company.
“We never have faced anything like this before,” Mike Goss, a Toyota spokesman, said. Sales of Toyota’s full-size Tundra pickup fell 53 percent in June, and the company has bulging inventories of both the pickup and its large Sequoia S.U.V.
So Toyota is taking a page out of Detroit’s playbook by ceasing truck production at its plants in Princeton, Ind., and San Antonio from Aug. 8 until early November. The company will also suspend production of V-8 engines at a factory in Huntsville, Ala. |
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