Toyota: Mississippi plant?

[rickaren]

Toyota considers alternative use for Mississippi plant

Posted Thursday, Jun 11, 2009, 1:07 pm in Employee News

Toyota’s stalled Prius factory project in Tupelo, Miss., might not be a Prius factory when work on the plant finally resumes, the Automotive News reported.

The company is entertaining new ideas about other products it could build there, said Steve St. Angelo, senior vice president of Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing North America Inc., the trade paper said. St. Angelo, who spoke yesterday at the Automotive News Manufacturing Conference, said Toyota’s most pressing issue is getting all of its plants and employees back to working at full speed before resuming the Tupelo project.

He said no change to the plan has been made, but he acknowledged that it might be possible to produce the Prius hybrid at a different North American assembly plant and to use the Tupelo site for a different vehicle, the paper said. He said the project would not go forward “until we understand exactly what we’re going to build in the United States,” the story said.

Toyota broke ground on the $1.3 billion Tupelo plant in 2006 to produce Highlander crossovers, the paper said. Last summer the automaker delayed the project and then later changed plans to produce the Prius there instead. But last December, Toyota halted the project indefinitely, opting to finish construction of the building shell and wait for market conditions to improve, the story said. (Automotive News)