Updated Toyota Statement Regarding Earthquake Situation in Japan

 Source: Toyota Media

Updated Toyota Statement Regarding Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan

(March 16, 2011; Posted at 3:15 PM EDT) - Regarding Toyota's North American operations, so far the impact is limited. All 13 North American vehicle and engine plants are running normally, although overtime has been curtailed for now to assure we maintain adequate inventories of parts that come from Japan. In addition, since most parts and materials for Toyota's North American-built vehicles are provided by suppliers in North America, this helps insulate Toyota's North American plants from production interruptions in Japan.

Regarding dealerships in Canada, inventories are good with adequate levels of supply.  Toyota now makes 12 different models in North America, including high-volume vehicles such as Camry, Corolla, RAV4, and Lexus RX 350, and just over 80 percent of all Toyota and Lexus vehicles sold in Canada are made in North America.

Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan is donating 300 million yen (approximately $3.75 million) to support relief efforts.

We will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available.

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 Previous Updates:

(March 16, 2011; Posted at 7:00 AM EDT) - We continue to place priority on supporting the relief efforts in the regions affected and ensuring that our team members, the employees at subsidiary vehicle manufacturers and at our suppliers—and all their respective family members—are safe. 

With that in mind, Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) has decided to continue the vehicle-production halt started on March 14 at all plants in Japan (including subsidiary vehicle manufacturers) through March 22.

A decision on when vehicle production will resume in Japan has yet to be made. 

Separately, we will resume production of replacement parts for vehicles already on the market beginning March 17. This will allow us to take care of current Toyota owners who may need repairs.

Additionally, in an effort to keep production lines moving overseas, we plan to restart production of parts for overseas production on March 21. 

We will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available.

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(March 14, 2011, 9:30 a.m.) - We continue to place priority on supporting the relief efforts in the regions affected and ensuring that our team members, the employees at subsidiary vehicle manufacturers and at our suppliers—and all their respective family members—are safe.   

To that end, we are halting production at all plants in Japan (including subsidiary vehicle manufacturers) from March 14 through March 16.  

We will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available.

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Toyota's associates and team members in North America extend our heartfelt sympathy and deepest condolences to the people of Japan, our colleagues and their families.

Our utmost concern has been the safety of all Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) team members and team members at our partner companies in the Tohoku region.

TMC has established a company-wide emergency task force to continually assess the situation and take initial measures.

There have been no reported injuries at Toyota operations, including the Tokyo head office, the Higashifuji facility, Tochigi office, Yamanashi office, Toyota Motor Tohoku facilities and at TMC subsidiary vehicle manufacturers.

While TMC plants were able to restart production on 3/11, plants that stopped production are Toyota subsidiary plants that produce parts and vehicles, including:

• Toyota Motor Hokkaido Plant
• Toyota Motor Tohoku Plant
• Central Motor Corporation Miyagi Plant, which also produces the Yaris model.
• Kanto Auto Works Iwate Plant, which also produces the Scion xB and Scion xD.

Employees at these facilities were evacuated to safe areas.

We are now conducting a detailed survey of each plant to determine the extent of any damage. We are also currently assessing the situation at our suppliers, dealers and the impact on North American import vehicles.

As we are committed to ensuring the safety of our team members and their families, Toyota has decided to suspend production at all TMC plants, as well as all subsidiary vehicle-manufacturing plants on Monday, March 14th.

Toyota’s number one priority is to support our team members at TMC, our partner companies, suppliers and dealers through this situation. On behalf of the company globally, TMC is moving to donate 300 million yen (approximately $3.75 million) for relief and recovery efforts in communities affected by the Tohoku Earthquake and is also considering the provision of goods and services as needed.

We will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available.