Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama Inc. officials began production Monday of the first V6 engines at its manufacturing plant in Huntsville. The factory will supply engines for the planned Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas Inc. Tundra plant, which is slated to open next year in San Antonio.
The Texas plant expects to build 200,000 Tundras each year and employ
2,000 workers. It will receive shipments of V6 and V8 engines from the Alabama plant to build trucks locally.The new line of V6 engines also will be used for Tacoma pickup trucks built in Fremont, Calif., and Baja California, Mexico.
The Alabama plant currently has more than 500 employees and has the capacity to produce 120,000 V8 and 130,000 V6 engines annually. It already supplies V8 engines for the Tundra full-sized pickup and Sequoia full-sized sport utility vehicles built in Indiana.
The Alabama plant opened in 2003 and Toyota officials are in the process of expanding V8 production and increasing employment to 800 workers.
All of Toyota's manufacturing plants are owned by Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM - News) in New York. By 2008, the Japanese automaker will have the ability to build 1.81 million cars and trucks in North America annually.