Poor Yarii Toyota, the world's largest automaker, and its affiliates closed three factories, said Shiori Hashimoto, a spokeswoman in Tokyo. The Toyota City-based carmaker began production at a new plant in Miyagi this year that makes Yaris compact cars and has capacity to make 120,000 vehicles a year. Honda, Nissan Honda Motor Co. closed two factories, said Hajime Kaneko, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based carmaker. A 42-year-old male employee was crushed to death by a collapsing wall at a research and development center in Tochigi prefecture and about 30 other employees were injured, Kaneko said. Nissan Motor Co. closed four factories including car plants in Tochigi and Kanagawa and engine factories in Kanagawa and Fukushima, Mitsuru Yonekawa, a spokesman for the Yokohama-based company, said by phone. Two workers suffered minor injuries, he said. A refinery on fire outside Tokyo exploded, while nuclear power stations were shut down. Narita airport, Tokyo's main international gateway, was closed and bullet-train services suspended. More than 4 million homes were without power, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
Re: Toyota plant I assume their talking about the "streched" Prius. Not really a mini-van like the Estima, right?
Agreed. Eehhh, not after the subsequent fire: From http://www.hybridcars.com/news/earthquake-threatens-derail-hybrid-recovery-29596.html: Apparently both Honda and Nissan took a big hit on their hybrid cars and the Nissan Leaf.
Leaf plant started back up mar 21st but admitted production would be determined by availability of power which is still an unknown. Toyota is supposed to start back up tomorrow
NPR's been doing so coverage about the impacts to automakers lately. I've been listening to some of stories relating to the disaster thanks the NPR iPhone app. Nissan has come up a bunch. Here's one story: 'Just In Time' Manufacturing Tested By Japan Crisis : NPR
