Toyota Announces New U.S. Investment, Including at Tennessee, Missouri Aluminum Plants
Automaker Toyota last week announced a push to increase its previous investment pledge in the U.S.
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Last week the automaker announced it would up a 2017 pledge to invest $10 billion in the U.S. over five years, increasing the investment up to $13 billion.
“These latest investments represent even more examples of our long-term commitment to build where we sell,” said Jim Lentz, chief executive officer for Toyota Motor North America, in a company release. “By boosting our U.S. manufacturing footprint, we can better serve our customers and dealers and position our manufacturing plants for future success with more domestic capacity.”
In addition to the wider pledge, Toyota announced investments totaling $750 million in five states: Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia. The investments include “production capacity increases and building expansions at Toyota’s unit plants in Huntsville, Alabama, Buffalo, West Virginia, Troy, Missouri and Jackson, Tennessee.”
An investment of $288 million aims to increase annual engine capacity from 670,000 to 900,000 by the end of 2021 at its Huntsville, Alabama plant, and will include the addition of 450 new jobs.
A $238 million investment at its Georgetown, Kentucky plant will see to the commencement of production of the Lexus ES 300h hybrid in May, with production of the RAV4 hybrid beginning in 2020.
Toyota is also investing in its Bodine Aluminum plant in Missouri toward the goal of producing an additional “864,000 cylinder heads for Toyota’s New Global Architecture (TNGA),” up from the current level of more than 3 million cylinder heads per year. The automaker is also investing in its Tennessee aluminum plant, namely for equipment and a building expansion to double its annual capacity of hybrid transaxle cases and housings to 240,000.
Toyota also plans to double its capacity of hybrid transaxles to 240,000 by 2021 at its West Virginia plant.
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Earlier this month the automaker reported its February U.S. sales were down 5.2% year over year. For the first two months of the year, Toyota’s U.S. sales are down 5.9% compared with the same time period in 2018.
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