When Terashi Shigeki, CEO of Toyota Motor Company in North America, was interviewed in North American International Auto Show in Detroit in Jan 14, he said Toyota will take local production into consideration to reduce the cost, due to the good sales of Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) Prius in North America.
In 2012, the sales of Prius in US increased 73% compared to the previous year and it was about 240m vehicles, occupied 82% of the Toyota’s HEV total sales in US, which became Toyota ’s main force to revive.
Although HEV such as ‘Camry’ and ‘Avalon’ had realized the local production, they were still threatened by the HEV of Ford Motor Company. Terashi said that local production of the demand models was the premise of improving the competitive.
Honda Motor Company also promoted the local production of HEV actively. Ito Xiaoshin, President of Honda, expressed that it is necessary to promote the local production of HEV’s auto parts in US in the future.
Honda released the plan in Jan 14, ‘NSX Concept’, put in Japan at the end of 2013 and US in 2014, will be manufactured by the finished factory in Mexico.
