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But for now, Toyota officials are downplaying another Japanese newspaper's report that the automaker will begin production at the plant next year.
On Sunday, the Tokyo Shimbun said Toyota will open the facility in June 2011. In December, the Japanese business daily Nikkei said Toyota would resume work at the plant, without giving a date.
Neither story quoted Toyota officials.
And on Monday, Barbara McDaniel, a spokeswoman for Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc., said the Tokyo Shimbun report, like the earlier Nikkei report, was premature.
"Nothing official has been determined," she said. "Consistent with what we've been saying, when market conditions allow, there will be an announced decision on start-up for Blue Springs."
A spokeswoman for the Mississippi Development Authority echoed McDaniel.
Plans for the Blue Springs operation have been on hold since Toyota announced in December 2008 that it would delay its opening until the economy improved.
In December, reacting to the Nikkei report that also said that Toyota planned to build the Corolla sedan instead of the Prius Hybrid in Blue Springs, McDaniel said that "we remain committed to the Mississippi project and continue to monitor market conditions and study options."
The Corolla and Prius are built on the same vehicle platform.
Rumors have swirled that Toyota Mississippi could be in line to build one or both of the vehicles. The Corolla is built at the New United Motor Manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif., in a facility that Toyota once operated with General Motors.
But after filing for bankruptcy protection last year, GM pulled out of the joint venture. Toyota said it could not operate the plant alone and plans to shut it down on March 31.
That has led to speculation that Toyota would announce afterward that it would shift some of its Corolla production to Blue Springs before starting production of the Prius. However, a Toyota plant in Canada also produces the Corolla.
But with Toyota's recent troubles - the company has recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide - some automotive experts say Toyota isn't in any condition to expand its capacity, particularly since company president Akio Toyoda said Toyota had grown too fast in recent years.
Last week, Gov. Haley Barbour said he had no doubt that Toyota would eventually open the Blue Springs plant. In fact, he said Toyota would open it "sooner than people think" but added that he had no inside knowledge to support the claim.
"Not because I have inside information, but I look at what's happening in the market, I look at what's happening with the dollar, I look at the closure of the plant in California that they operated with General Motors," he said. "I take all those things and in my own mind it says to me something happening here is sooner rather than later, though I'm not saying it's gonna be tomorrow."
The Tokyo Shimbun report also said that state officials had pressed Toyota to open the plant soon.
Contact Dennis Seid at (662) 678-1578 or dennis.seid@djournal.com.
I hope that I'd be able to remain calm enough to try all the things this guy did. I've driven in California traffic and my hat's off to him for having the presence of mind to try all of those things.
NHTSA and Toyota are both sending investigators to look at that vehicle. It'll be interesting to hear what comes out of their examination of that car.
It looks like Toyota may have learned something from their appearance before that Congressional panel. At least now they're making an effort to examine a car that is known to have at least one of the issues.
I was shocked that they hadn't thought of that before their Congressional panel appearance and they actually had to have those congressmen tell them to get their hands on a car with a known issue.
That's usually step #1 in the troubleshooting process. I was embarrassed for them that they had to be told that they should do that by a bunch of politicians.
According to the news that I follow, this guy did everything and then some to figure out how to stop that vehicle. He was a lot more cool and collected than I would have been in that situation.
Cynical is not the term that comes to mind when I read your comments, sandlot. Sorry, but you can call me a four letter word of your choice........
But, according to the driver in his interview with CNN, he was "standing on the brake pedal" and that he also applied the emergency brake and reached down and tried to physically pull the accelerator up. He said that he didn't want to turn the car off in the middle of traffic until the CHPs were around him to protect him from the other traffic.
So, it seems as if he did think of turning the car off.
But then, on most vehicles, turning the key too far to the off position actually locks the steering wheel. So, I wouldn't want to do that in traffic either.
He's also quoted as saying "my mat was perfect. There was nothing wrong with my mat."
BTW, according to CNN, the recall on this guy's car that the dealership told him wasn't for his car was for BRAKES not acceleration issues.
The Prius in question was recalled, the owner received a recall notice, but when the owner took it to the dealership he was told that it was a "mistake" and that there was nothing wrong with his car and that it wasn't included in the recall.
So, the Prius in Lisa49's incident was already subject to a recall, but the situation was mishandled when he took his car to the dealer.
A mistake that could have cost this man his life.
So, any comments here about recalls are not about an additional recall. They're about the ones that have already been made not being effective.
Besides, no truly logically thinking person really believes that this is a "floormat entrapment" issue. And Toyota's own data shows that the recalls for "floormat entrapment" and "sticky pedal" fixes does not address 70% of the cars in the incidents reported to Toyota itself.
So, nice try trying to cover up for Toyota, have another drink of your Toyota Kool-Aid.
http://nems360.com/pages/bizbuzz
But in case you haven't seen the blog, there's been a lot of talk about a WSJ story that says Toyota plans to expand its Prius recall. It's timely because of the runaway Prius incident Lisa49 mentioned.
But here's the press release Toyota just put out:
Toyota Responds to Inaccurate Reports of Future Prius Recall for Floormat Entrapment
Media reports, citing a Wall Street Journal article, have incorrectly reported that Toyota plans to announce a new recall for the 2004-2009 Prius to address the potential risk for floor mat entrapment of accelerator pedals.
There is no new recall being planned for the Prius to address this issue. To be clear, the 2004-2009 Prius was part of Toyota’s November 2, 2009 announcement of a voluntary safety recall campaign to address floor mat entrapment in certain Toyota and Lexus vehicles. This announcement can be found at our press room at: http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/lexus/toyota-begins-interim-notification-112086.aspx.
Other models involved in this previously-announced recall include 2007 to 2010 Camry, 2005 to 2010 Avalon, 2005 to 2010 Tacoma, 2007 to 2010 Tundra, 2007 to 2010 ES350, 2006 to 2010 IS250, and 2006 to 2010 IS 350. On January 27, 2010, Toyota expanded the campaign to include the 2008-2010 Highlander, 2009-2010 Corolla, 2009-2010 Venza, 2009-2010 Matrix and 2009-2010 Pontiac Vibe.
The remedy process for these vehicles began at the end of 2009 and is occurring on a rolling schedule during 2010. Owners of the involved vehicles that have not yet been remedied are asked to take out any removable driver’s side floor mat and not replace it with any other floor mat.
Owners who have further questions are asked to visit www.toyota.com or www.lexus.com or contact the Toyota Customer Experience Center at 1-800-331-4331 or Lexus Customer Assistance at 1-800-255-3987.
-- 89 class action lawsuits filed against Toyota with Toyota owners citing the devaluation of their vehicles due to the recent recalls.
-- An additional $5B (at least) in costs THIS YEAR ALONE for marketing, recall mitigation and lawsuits for Toyota.
-- Overall a poor handling of the situation and inept efforts to rehabilitate the Toyota brand.
Add to that the situation that Lisa49 cited of the Prius suddenly accelerating and a state trooper having to get in front of the car to help the driver stop it.
Add to all that the fact that their sales a down and this doesn't seem like a company that's about to spend an additional $1B outfitting a plant to build Prius anytime soon.
Sales are down 8.7% over last year, which were down over the previous year.
They've recalled 8.5M cars and are probably going to have to recall more since their own data shows that models not yet recalled accounted for more than 70% of the "sudden unintended acceleration" issues reported to their customer service center(s).
And they don't know how long they're going to get by without admitting and addressing the real problem in these reports of "sudden unintended acceleration", the electronics. That's going to be a LOT more expensive than a "pedal fix" or telling customers not to use floor mats.
It makes much more business sense for them to shift the Corolla manufacturing from the CA plant that they're closing this month to another plant that is already up and running and building the Corolla, such as their Canadian plant. DUH!!!
Once again, our "brilliant" governor never misses an opportunity to make himself look stupid by giving an uninformed, unnecessary and meaningless quote. And of course the Journal never misses an opportunity to print those uninformed, unnecessary, and meaningless quotes, thus making it look almost as stupid as the governor.
And the only quote that the MDA person can give is basically "yeah, what she said", so it too is meaningless. But the Journal includes it too!!
When is the Journal going to figure out that the only quote that matters in this situation is one coming from Toyota itself and stop giving all these other bozos like, Barbour, Rumbarger (sp?), and Kelley opportunities to look like the idiots?