Hino Motors, Toyota’s commercial vehicle arm, has said that it will halt truck production at its California plant as the US economic slowdown hits demand for commercial vehicles. But the plant won’t be completely shut and will continue to make parts.
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Truck production at the plant will end in July and be transferred to Hino’s second US factory in West Virginia that opened last year, said company spokesman Hidenobu Tezuka.
“Material costs are rising and US consumption has fallen due to the subprime crisis. The output at our plant was not what we had expected,” he told AFP.
The move will roughly halve Hino’s North American truck output capacity from 9,500 units a year to 4,500, Tezuka said.
Hino’s California plant has assembled parts for trucks for the North American market since October 2004. The company also has a plant in Ontario, Canada.
