Area Development
Toyota Motor Corporation will shift production of its compact Tacoma truck to its facility in San Antonio, Texas, and add up to 1,000 new jobs at the plant. The Associated Press (AP) reports that the Texas plant is currently producing the full-size Tundra truck, but that the company has had to furlough workers and cut back to one shift as demand for the larger truck has fallen off; adding the Tacoma is expected to bring the facility close to its full production capacity by sometime next summer. The move comes after General Motors Company (GM) decided to end the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) partnership with Toyota and shut down the California facility where the two companies shared production space. Toyota was manufacturing both the Tacoma and the compact Corolla car at that plant; the company will move Corolla production to its Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, facility. A Toyota spokesperson tells the AP that existing Tundra workers at the Texas plant will have to undergo additional training because both trucks will come off the same assembly line. The AP report says that state and local governments offered a number of unnamed financial incentives to Toyota, but that the automaker did not request them as part of the deal.