Jul

Toyota’s Prius Becomes a Southern Belle

Posted by admin Published in Toyota

The SUV is dead and Toyota can’t build Prius hybrids fast enough, so it’s suspending production of big trucks and will build the Prius in Mississippi at a plant that was slated to produce SUVs.

The sudden shuffle is strange for a company known to take its day making investment decisions and underscores how quickly the industry is deep-sixing trucks to crank out fuel-efficient cars. Automakers can’t give trucks away these days, so Toyota’s decided to pull the plug on Tundra pickup and Sequoia SUV production for three months beginning in August.

Every one of the one-million plus Prius hybrids on the road was built in Japan, but Toyota can no longer build them fast adequate to meet demand. Sales actually fell by one third final month considering dealers simply ran out of cars. That’s got the company scuttling a plan to produce the Highlander - which saw sales fall 38.9 percent final month - at a plant under interpretation in Blue Springs, Miss. and build the Prius there instead.

We won’t see the Prius rolling off the line there until 2010, but that didn’t keep John McEleney, a Toyota dealer in Clinton, Iowa, from telling

Reuters, “It’s tremendous news. We’ve been sold out for five months and we have nothing to show customers in showrooms. Prius is very popular and the sort is going to become stronger and stronger.”

The switch could cost Toyota a bundle. According to Automotive News (free subscription req.), the company planned to spend $1.3 billion moving Highlander production from Japan to the U.S. The SUV still will be built here, but it will be added to Toyota’s truck plant in Princeton, Ind. And beginning next spring, production of the Tundra full-size pickup will be consolidated at a plant in San Antonio that opened final year.

Cutting Tundra production is a blow to Toyota. The truck was Toyota’s attempt to break into the full-size pickup market dominated by Detroit, and Toyota was building them out at plants in Indiana and Texas. The consolidation will cut production by one-third to 200,000 annually, an indication Toyota doesn’t think sales - which were down 52.9 percent final month - will bounce back.

Photo by Toyota.

Original post by Chuck Squatriglia