Toyota’s New Texas Line May Not Stop at the Tacoma

Toyota’s second assembly line in San Antonio is being built for the Tacoma, but the company’s chief financial officer says it could end up building other body-on-frame models too.

The remark came as Toyota reported a second quarter in which North America barely broke even, and it is the first public sign that the $3.6 billion Texas expansion announced in July may be sized for more than one truck. Toyota has not named any additional model, and nothing beyond the Tacoma is confirmed for the new line.

Executive Vice President Yoichi Miyazaki made the comment at the results briefing in Tokyo on November 5, according to MotorTrend, which reported that retooling the plant for a body-on-frame truck opens up the possibility of adding other body-on-frame models to the line. Automotive News reported the same briefing under the headline that Toyota is weighing more product for Texas, and quoted Miyazaki as saying the company is reviewing its North American factory footprint and product lineup to get the region back on a "strong growth trajectory." Toyota has not confirmed a second model for the plant, and its own materials from the briefing stop short of naming one.

What Toyota did put in writing points the same way. The North America slide in Miyazaki’s presentation is titled "Return to a Strong Growth Trajectory," and his prepared remarks promised to get there by "increasing production of high-demand hybrid batteries, significantly reducing external outflow costs by restructuring our vehicle lineup, and advancing automation through the introduction of robotics." An earlier slide on production said Toyota "will fully utilize our existing capabilities while also establishing new plants in necessary regions to increase our production capacity." Restructuring the lineup to cut "external outflow costs" is the closest Toyota has come to saying it wants to build more of what it sells here, here.

The numbers explain the urgency. North America earned 6.7 billion yen of operating income in the July-to-September quarter on the basis Toyota uses for its regional chart, a margin of 0.1 percent, after a 70.4 billion yen loss a year earlier. Including swap valuation losses the region was still 19.2 billion yen in the red for the quarter, roughly $121 million at the 159 yen rate Toyota reported. Toyota blamed tariffs for the region’s loss in the fiscal year that ended in March and said price increases and "the reduced impact of U.S. tariffs" drove the recovery, as Toyota Report covered when the results landed.

The Texas project itself has not changed. Toyota announced on July 6 that the second line would add 2.5 million square feet and 2,000 jobs, doubling the plant by 2030, and that Tacoma production would move from the Baja California plant in Mexico over about four years. The plant built more than 197,000 Tundras and Sequoias last year on its single line, and MotorTrend put the new line’s capacity at an additional 150,000 vehicles a year. Toyota said in October that hiring for the line will not begin until 2029. The person who will have to decide what else runs down it is Mark Templin, who takes over as Toyota Motor North America’s CEO on January 1.

The Toyota Report Take

A 150,000-unit line for a truck that sells the way the Tacoma does sounds like it is spoken for, but the Tacoma is not leaving Mexico entirely: the July announcement covers Baja California, and Guanajuato keeps building it. That leaves room on the new line, and Miyazaki’s hint is the first acknowledgment that Toyota has noticed. The obvious candidates are the body-on-frame models it still imports from Japan and pays tariffs on, the 4Runner and the Land Cruiser, since both share the Tacoma’s TNGA-F bones and both sell in volumes that would fill the gap. Toyota has said nothing of the kind, and it will not until the line is further along, so treat this as a direction rather than a plan. But a CFO does not float extra product for a plant by accident in the middle of an earnings call. If a 4Runner ever rolls out of San Antonio, this is the day it started.

More on the Tacoma

• A 23-Year-Old Tacoma Just Sold for Nearly the Price of a New One
• Toyota’s Tijuana Line Stays, but the Tacoma Still Goes