I wasn't looking for this but found it buried in a press release just before the "Media Contacts" line: Source: Toyota | Toyota Leads the Charge in Hybrid Technology with Steady Popularity in California Sounds like something fun. Bob Wilson
I wonder if it has anything to do with their North American CEO moving to the area? Toyota's North American CEO moves office to Ann Arbor area technical center In any event, I live very close to Ypsilanti. I'll have to check out this event when it happens!
strange. Your link didn't have what your quote did. I couldn't find out what the event really was about but here is an explanation of the strange movement of Toyota's CEO of North American operations New Toyota boss picks Michigan | The Detroit News It makes perfect sense that Toyota would put more emphasis on North America. If you rearrange the quarterly reports to use more US style accounting rules, the growing profitable part of Toyota's business is in the US. It also makes sense that you have an R&D center where the other companies R&D centers are so you can raid talent (but talent can also be raided from. It does seem like a strange move though for the North American operations to choose Michigan. I can understand leaving California, but why Michigan over KY? The free press has an answer Toyota exec looks to make a mark in Michigan | Detroit Free Press | freep.com Good move to design the cars more to localized tastes. My fear is toyota will become more like a Michigan automaker. There is so much dead wood and bad old ideas there. gulp, maybe it is up to hyundai and tesla to show the leadership now. But there are good signs as well
It is buried at the very end of the originally linked article, just above the 'media contacts' section.
Try not to paint with too broad a brush. Toyota's Ann Arbor tech center's been there for over 25 years. Metro Detroit makes sense because it has such a huge pool of engineering talent, most of whom don't work for the "Detroit" OEM's.
My guess his he can't afford the west side of Los Angeles real estate where small starter homes cost 1.5 Mill in a decent zip code.
