Toyota Motor Corp. is getting behind the post-earthquake recovery effort by building its first engine plant in the Tohoku region, sources said July 15.
Toyota Motor Corp. is getting behind the post-earthquake recovery effort by building its first engine plant in the Tohoku region, sources said July 15.
Initial plans to build the plant, which will be in Daiwa, Miyagi Prefecture, were postponed following the financial crisis triggered by the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in late 2008. However, as a means of helping the Tohoku region recover after the Great East Japan Earthquake, construction of the plant is now scheduled to begin before the end of this year.
A compact version of the hybrid Prius, meanwhile, is to go into production in Iwate Prefecture before the end of this year, and will go on sale from next January.
Toyota President Akio Toyoda will formally announce the plans on July 19 at a news conference scheduled to take place in Sendai.
The engine plant, which will be Toyota's fifth in Japan, will be constructed by Toyota Motor Tohoku Corp., a subsidiary that currently manufactures parts.
In the original plan, about 200,000 compact car engines were to be manufactured at the new plant and supplied to a plant in Miyagi Prefecture belonging to Central Motor Co., another Toyota group company.
About 500 workers will be hired at the new engine plant.
While domestic production of the Prius has been limited until now to a plant in Aichi Prefecture, where Toyota has its headquarters, the compact model will be manufactured in the Tohoku region, where personnel costs are cheaper and plant equipment is newer.
Production will begin at the Kanegasaki, Iwate Prefecture, plant of Kanto Auto Works Ltd., another group company.
If sales of the compact Prius are favorable, Toyota officials will consider extending production to the Central Motor plant.
The compact model will likely be based on the Prius C prototype that was unveiled by Toyota in January.
The compact Prius will have a 1.5-liter engine and boasts one of the best fuel-efficiency figures of any vehicle in the world, exceeding the 32.6 kilometers per liter of gasoline managed by the Prius.