Getting your new 2016 may be a problem in the near term - Toyota steel plant blew up

you're in good company. i wouldn't mind if they started building them here, but i think i'm in the minority, and i really don't care either way.

 

It was good prediction from Toyota actually that production wont warrant it. With sedan/car sales in free-fall this year due to gas prices, and SUV sales going up, their doubling of Rav4 production and increases of Highlander, RX and planned Tacoma factory now make a lot of sense.

Roughly 100k sales per year dont warrant a new factory in NA. Rav4 doing 400k per year certainly does.

Plenty of other Toyota hybrids built in USA and more to come.

As to worldwide Prius production, there was a CKD plant production in Thailand to skirt customs, and there was something similar in China with G2. They are producing Corolla Hybrids everywhere these days tho, so I guess Prius is one left in Japan because Japan is by far the biggest market and they already have plants setup. Now when it comes to hybrids, they are trying to move most of them locally, so we have Auris in UK, Yaris in France, Corolla/Levin Hybrids in China... US has a lot of them too - Avalon, Camry, Lexus ES, Highlander, Lexus RX and Rav4 hybrid are all made in the North America or will be by 2019. All but Prius.

 

I think Rav4 Hybrid will start production in 2019 there, thats what PR says. Right now they dont have enough capacity as it is so it doesnt make sense to produce new hybrid there. So all hybrids and significant number of regular Rav4's are currently imported from Japan.

December 2015, 16.5k Rav4's were built in Canada, out of 32k sold... rest of them were imported from Japan.

 

good point about production spwolf, if toyota opened a prius plant here, they'd probably be closing it now.

 

２．Cause of the accident
We suppose that (1) when the operator began the reheating furnace ignition process, gas leaked from valves (the valves have been recovered and are being examined) and accumulated in the furnace.
(2) The pre-ignition air purge process was not carried out and the pilot burner flame ignited the accumulated gas.

I'll bet there was a safety interlock, but it was disabled. Those things can slow you down.

 

http://www.aichi-steel.co.jp/ENGLISH/TOPICS/topics20160122-3.pdf

 

Wow I don't we'll ever see open communications like this in America, from a company to the public. I am very impressed. Of course, serious errors were made with flammable gas handling.

Implies more of a positive relationship between company and public/governments. Of course the VW situation shows a little what can go wrong with the more positive relationship.