Toyota may delay building a Prius plant in Mississippi by about a year, The Nikkei said on its Web site in a report dated Friday. The plant, which was originally scheduled to be online in 2010, may now be delayed to 2011, the Japanese business daily reported. The plant, originally scheduled to begin operating in 2010, is now expected to go into production in 2011 or later, the Nikkei said, without citing sources. The Mississippi plant will produce the Prius hybrid. The world's biggest automaker shocked investors earlier this month when it cut its operating profit forecast by 63 percent to 600 billion yen ($6.3 billion), a 13-year low. Apart from the slump in U.S. auto sales, Japanese carmakers have been hit by a strong yen. Toyota considering delay at U.S. plant-Nikkei | Markets | Markets News | Reuters
This may be premature to ask, but would Toyota begin production of the 2010 Prius in Japan then move it to the US? Or would they likely build the 3gen Prius in Japan, and begin manufacture of the plug-in Prius in the US?
Well there was a news item last night that Toyota had to restart production of large PUs and SUVs in the US plant, due to Americans having such short memories ("hey, gas is cheap, lets go buy a guzzler! On credit!"). And you wonder why the economy is in such dire straights.
No, it was a scheduled restart. They had not made a single 09 Tundra at that plant yet and toyota was paying them to do nothing. Toyota has a 300 day supply of tundras, so don't expect it to stay running long.
Its business, gas is at $2.00/gallon, nothing is selling and there is a backlash danger in the US. What would you do?
Toyota might have excess capacity to build Prius at home if wprldwide economy sucks, so they are probably being cautius before they bring additional capacity online.
My understanding is that they were going to build the 3g Prius in both places anyway, the MS plant would have just helped serve the US demand. With that demand a bit uncertain, I'm not surprised they are slowing plans down to see what happens. Rob
Well, somebody is going to have to build them as GM, Ford and Chrysler aren't long for this world arty: (and good riddance).
again, i dont think demand for Prius is uncertain... but worldwide demand for vehicles is. Toyota next year will have enough plants to build 10 million vehicles... if worldwide sales go down, and they sell only 9 million, they will definetly stop building new plants until they reach capacity... Prius can be produced in large quantities in Japan in any case, and they have so far planned 500k per year just from their Japanese factories.
We will have the Prius one way or another. If the auto market has contracted in the short-term because the economy has contracted, then that's just that. If auto sales and Toyota-wide sales are down X %, then Toyota is going to be manufacturing X % fewer of all of their vehicles for the next several months or until the economy pics up again. This means nothing specific about the Prius. From a business perspective, delaying the construction of the plant by one year makes perfect sense. In a slumping economy, you don't exactly want to be spending large amounts of money. They are watching their money in the short term, and will build their plant when the economy pics up again. They still have plans to build this plant. The most important part of this is that Toyota is "delaying" the plant and not "cancelling" the plant.
This is what happens when greed sets in, quality goes out, and buyers go away. This is a lesson they could've learned 30 years ago...
Not exactly true. Yes this was the scheduled restart after a 90 day closure to allow he 08s to flush out of the system. We are the top Toyota truck retailer in the middle Atlantic states and we've got about 30-45 days of inventory on hand. That's about normal.
This is more likely the reality. Toyota's official but unprinted guidance to the owners is to expect all of 2009 to be as bad as the end of 2008. Recovery isn't foreseen until 2010. Subject to revisions of course.
