Toyota announces plans to keep all its European factories
- The Japanese carmaker Toyota, the world's largest carmaker, has announced that it intends to maintain its European assembly plants and not follow the example of Honda, which closed its British and Turkish factories in 2022. Toyota has an assembly plant in the United Kingdom (Burnaston, 98,069 units in 2024), a second in France (Onnaing, 279,613 units), a third in the Czech Republic (Kolin,243,964 units), a fourth in Turkey (Adapazari, 158,076 units), a fifth in Portugal (Ovar, 2,525 units), not to mention the production sites for vans derived from those of Stellantis following the agreement signed between the two carmakers: ProAce City in Vigo (43,084 units) in Spain, ProAce in Hordain (32,359 units) in France and ProAce Max in Gliwice in Poland, these last three sites belonging to the Stellantis group. Also worth mentioning is the Magna-Steyr site in Graz (Austria) which produces the Supra coupe in small quantities.
- In total, Toyota produced nearly 865,000 vehicles in Europe in 2024.
- The carmaker announced that most of its assembly plants would have to start producing models with fully electric engines, to the detriment of combustion engines and full-hybrid engines.
- ProAce , ProAce City and ProAce Max vans are already available with fully electric engines and a new battery electric CHR+ has just appeared at the Turkish Adapazari site. The British plant in Burnaston will in turn have to gradually make way for new battery electric models to replace the Corolla Full-hybrid. This strategy is reminiscent of that of its compatriot Nissan, which recently announced the imminent start of three battery electric models at the British site in Sunderland: Leaf, Juke and Qashqai. Toyota points out that almost all of its European production is sold in Europe and that the increase in trade barriers around the world will accentuate this type of strategy among all carmakers.