Toyota is collectively spending $154 million to expand its York Township and Ann Arbor Township R&D centers.
YORK TOWNSHIP — After 40 years, Toyota is still growing in Michigan.
The Japanese automaker unveiled a 135,000-square-foot expansion of its research and development center in York Township on Thursday and celebrated the 40th anniversary of its research and development operations in Michigan.
« We are very proud of being an integral part of Michigan’s cultural fabric, » said Jim Lentz, CEO of Toyota North America. « We are recruiting some of our brightest minds who want to join our efforts here in Michigan. »
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Over the last two years, Toyota has invested $126 million in York Township so it could add a purchasing and prototype development center to its research and development center, which opened in 2008.
Collectively, the facilities are called the Toyota Technical Center.
Toyota also is spending about $28 million to expand its nearby operations in Ann Arbor Township so the automaker can develop more of the engines and automatic transmissions for vehicles designed and manufactured in North America.
Lentz said Toyota decided to move its purchasing department to Michigan because more of the suppliers from which the company buys parts are headquartered here and it also allows the company to be closer to the engineers who design the company’s vehicles.
« It made sense to have our engineers much closer to the people doing the purchasing, » Lentz said.
The automaker’s first research and development center opened in 1977 near Ann Arbor. That was five years after the automaker purchased Hilbert’s Garage, a small shop it acquired so it could have an emissions certification office near the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s testing lab in Ann Arbor.
Today, Toyota has 1,600 employees near Ann Arbor.
In York Township, about 300 purchasing employees work out of the new wing of the campus. Those jobs were relocated to Michigan from Erlanger, Ky., as part of a restructuring of Toyota’s North American operations.
Lentz also said Thursday he is concerned about President Donald Trump’s desire to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement even though only 6% of the cars and trucks the company produces in North America are made in Mexico.
« We are free traders. We have 69 manufacturing facilities in 30 countries, » Lentz said. « I don’t think I am behind the times by being a free trader. »
At the same time, Lentz said Toyota has transformed itself from a company that imported 100% of the vehicles it sold in the U. S. several decades ago to one that makes 71% of the vehicles it sells in North America.
« We don’ t necessarily disagree with his philosophy (of America first) , » Lentz said. « In fact, it’s a philosophy that we follow here in the U. S. «
Contact Brent Snavely: 313-222-6512 or bsnavely@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrentSnavely.
