Over the past decade, Toyota kept some vehicles in production where they helped sustain factory utilization rather than where they made the most sense for optimal productivity and manufacturing efficiency.
The Tacoma, for example, was added to the San Antonio plant in 2010 during a period of surging small car popularity and falling truck demand, when it became apparent that sales of the full-size Tundra were not enough to support the Texas plant.
The upcoming moves are part of major manufacturing investments that Toyota is undertaking in North America.
The company is midway through a five-year plan to spend $13 billion through 2021 on revitalizing and expanding its U.S., Canadian and Mexican plants and building new capacity.
Toyota and Mazda Motor Corp. are building a $1.6 billion joint-venture assembly plant in Huntsville, Ala., that will come online in 2021.
On Friday in Princeton, Toyota showed visitors a plant that underwent a $700 million refurbishing to build the redesigned Highlander. That expense does not cover whatever future costs arise from easing the Sequoia out of the plant next year.
The $13 billion capital program still has $5.9 billion that is not assigned — enough to build four or five new assembly plants, if the company chose to do so.
