Tech Advise

The Toyota, Mazda plant. A timely joint venture.

The list of states where the proposed massive Toyota-Mazda plant could call home was narrowed down to Alabama and North Carolina. The winning state for the $1.6 billion plant would finally be announce in the first quarter of 2018.

Car manufacturers Toyota Motor Corporation and Mazda Motor Corporation proposed a joint venture plant in the United States. USA Today reported the plant has the potential to create 4,000 new jobs directly and several thousand peripheral opportunities.

This factory will have the capacity to produce 300,000 cars per year. Both Japanese companies plan to open this plant by 2021. Understandably, more than a dozen states submitted their proposals. Some of these states included Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana and Mississippi, among others.

The competing states received a blind request for proposal, keeping the process in confidentiality. Finally, in August 2017, the Japanese automakers announced the proposed joint venture.  Although the selection of a home state for the Toyota Mazda plant was far from complete.

We have recently learned that the states of Illinois and Mississippi were eliminated from the running.

Toyota plans to assemble Corolla vehicles in the proposed plant.

Mazda announced they will use the plant to produce vehicles appealing to the U.S. market, mainly crossover models.

No doubt they will also investigate better electric vehicle technologies. On August 4, 2017 Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Mazda President and CEO Masamichi Kogai held a joint press conference in Tokyo. In this conference they expressed their commitment to develop more and better electric vehicle technology.

We must wonder if the plans for this massive Toyota Mazda plant is somehow related to well-driven pressure from President Donald Trump. After all, he criticized Toyota for building factories outside the U.S. Whatever the cause, the plans for the plant are welcome news. What do you think?