Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) will study producing SUVs at a plant it is building in Mexico’s central state of Guanajuato, in addition to the Tacoma truck model, Toyota de Mexico spokesman Luis Lozano told Reuters on Friday.
Toyota plans to take a 5 percent share of smaller Japanese rival Mazda Motor Corp (7261.T) as part of an alliance that will see the two build a $1.6 billion U.S. assembly plant and work together on electric vehicles.
“We’re going to concentrate only on pickups at the beginning and are studying the potential for SUVs in the future,” he said.
Toyota initially had been planning to produce Corollas at the $1 billion plant being built in Guanajuato but will now switch that production and a new Mazda SUV crossover to its new planned U.S. assembly plant.
Reporting by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Christian Plumb
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