Goodbye Mexico. Toyota is pulling Tacoma assembly from Baja California and moving it to San Antonio. Big shift. $3.6 billion big.
They want a second assembly line running by 2030. That timeline means a long transition. Four years of phasing out production in Mexico while Texas gets built up. The new line handles 150,00 units a year. Roughly double the current capacity? Maybe more. It depends how fast they scale.
Contributing to the local community. That’s their official line anyway.
The plant doubles in size. Adds 2.5 million square feet of space. Now the Tacoma sits alongside the Tundra and Sequoix. Not far away either. A new rear axle plant opens soon too. Everything clustered tight. Efficient? Or just convenient?
The Baja California site isn’t closed yet. It stays open for four more years. Then what? Nobody says. That ambiguity hangs in the air.
Meanwhile Toyota is begging for a USMCA fix. They need stability. Trump’s administration decided not to renew it automatically. Toyota builds Tacomas in Guanajuato too. That one stays. For now. So Mexican trucks won’t vanish overnight. Just… slowly?
Ted Ogawa called it a “testament” to the region. He talks about confidence and long-term growth. Words flow nicely when money does. Meaningful jobs. Sustainable jobs. Two thousand new ones anyway. Does the word matter less than the number?
Texas loves it. Greg Abbott got on the phone immediately.
- Supported by the Texas Enterprise Fund.
- Backed by the JETI program.
- Claims of unmatched business advantages.
He said it delivers economic opportunities for generations. Generations. That’s a heavy promise for a truck plant. Maybe he’s optimistic. Or maybe he’s just a politician.
San Antonio wins big today. Mexico loses a line later. The rest of us watch the price tag climb anyway. Tacoma prices just went up. Again. Does moving production help us?
Probably not immediately. Supply chains are messy. Regulations stick. Tariffs linger. You buy a Tacoma next year? It’ll still hurt the wallet. Maybe more if they pad the cost to recover that billion dollar bet.
So here we are. American soil. American workers. American taxes.
The truck changes addresses. The price tag?
We’ll see.
