Fremont now makes Teslas…
I’ll go a little off topic . . .
My preference for where “domestic” vehicles are produced . . .
USA
Canada
Mexico
We have GM vehicles in our fleet that were made in all 3 of those countries. I haven’t noticed any quality difference
I think the mexican corollas will be just fine
Politically, mexico is “a little bit” too corrupt for my preference, but I suppose it probably makes financial sense to build corollas there
It all boils down to cost per assembly hour and Mexico is going to be way cheaper than the U.S. or Canada.
And no doubt there’s some taxpayer incentive deals going on to boot.
Just a note about those “Made in America” VWs that surfaced back in the 80s. They were actually only assembled in the U.S. The components were all Mexican made.
The Matrix wasn’t marketed as a corolla but the owners manual of my aunt’s said it was a Corolla Matrix. The upcoming Scion iM is sold in many other markets as the Corolla (more of a VW golf style hatch than a wagon)
@GeorgeSanJose Corollas are made in many countries and locations. The original Canadian Toyota plant was built in the early 80s to serve the Canadian market. It was expanded several times and a sister plant was added in Woodstock, Ontario to make the RAV4.
The joint venture in California with GM was to benefit both GM and Toyota. GM learned next to nothing from observing the Toyota production system and quality control. Those Chevy Prisms built there were the best “GM Products” ever made.
I suppose you could surmise that GMs improved quality came from many sources. I choose to think that some of it came from working with Toyota at NUMMI.
Some Tacos will be made in Mexico, and some in Texas. Mine was made in Texas. But really, you can make “tacos” anywhere and they all taste just as good.
I’m glad Toyota (as Scion) is finally selling a typical modern compact hatchback. The im is not very pretty, but it is the right size and configuration for many people. Mazda has never had any trouble selling Mazda3 hatches. It has outsold the sedan for years. I suspect we would have considered an im if it had been available a couple of years ago, unless it is a complete dog.
The Toyota plant near me produces Corollas
http://toyotanews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+500k+corolla+line+off+tmmms.htm
When they broke ground on the factory it was announced that the Prius would be built there but then the economy took a dump and work stopped on building the factory. When work resumed on the factory it was announced that the Corolla would be produced and they seem to be producing quite a few of them. The plant is a great boost to the local economy.
Thanks for the link @“Rod Knox” , seems they are producing a lot of Corollas there in Mississippi. I’m guessing Corollas aren’t made in Texas, in the USA, only in Mississippi.
I guess it copied be worse. Costs are so high in Australia that all about factories are closing with production moved to other Asian countries. Holden’s will be build at GM Korea.
You’re right @MarkM. I looke up pricing on edmunds. They provide a typical sales price of $22,600 for the diesel. When I clicked on the build your own feature, it took me to all Cruze cars, not just diesels. I imagine a one year od Cruze could be purchased for under $20,000 if you can find one. It seems likely that the same thing happened with the Jetta.
@jtsanders Yes, Australia has the worst of all worlds. Small market, long distance from anywhere, high labor costs, militant unions and low unemployment. I worked for a power equipment company and our Sydney based plant had 200 work stoppages per year!!!
Without high tariff walls most manufacturing in Australia is uneconomic. The type of labor agreement negotiated by GM in the US after the bankruptcy would be inconceivable in Australia.
Canada has the advantage of being part of a huge market with a well developed manufacturing infrastructure and good skilled labor supply. Ford has been making cars there since the Model T.
This is a story that’s repeated all too often, not only in Mexico with it’s booming auto industry, but in other countries as well. It hasn’t helped the way it could.
Canada had a huge advantage in the dismantling of our industries according to the CEO of a Canadian paper company. They have national healthcare which reduced their cost by 30%, the amount they usually under bid our state’s industries operating in a benefit based system where the companies help pay for insurance.
The American auto worker faces the same competition as these illustrations on both sides of the border. They can keep the auto worker jobs here if they agree to Mexico level wages and no benefits.
We can talk about the high cost of labor here, but two facts remain; corporate profits are at an all time high and the standard of living for the middle class who make these cars has continued for nearly twenty years to drop. Sure, the average wage compared to Mexico is a bit higher. But it’s still nearly half of what it is in Germany. So, what direction should we still be moving in ?
Universal health care has to be funded somehow, and I suspect that all Canadian employers paid for it with higher taxes. I’m for universal health care because I think it is less expensive in the long run that employer funded systems where many citizens had no health insurance at all. Still, they have to pay for it.
“Universal health care has to be funded somehow, and I suspect that all Canadian employers paid for it with higher taxes.”
I don’t doubt that Canadian employers had to chip in for that health coverage, but I can’t forget The Provincial Tax that I paid the last time that I was in Nova Scotia. I bought a bottle of generic aspirin in a supermarket, and the total price at checkout was much higher than the label price.
When I inquired about the price disparity at the Courtesy Counter, I was told that a 16% Provincial Tax was levied on many categories of goods in order to fund the National Healthcare System.
…and Americans complain about high taxes in our country…
“They can keep the auto worker jobs here if they agree to Mexico level wages and no benefits.”
Why would anybody want to work at an auto factory located in the USA, if those were the conditions?
Mexico level wages . . . but the cost of living in the USA is presumably much higher than in Mexico, so those Mexico level wages wouldn’t go very far in the USA
And let’s not even get into “no benefits” . . .
I agree with @jtsanders . The employee has to pay some how and paying for it through his payroll taxes takes much of the burden of the immediacy off the employer. The average salary for an American unionized Auto worker is $29 per hour. That does not “seem” unreasonable. But, for the employer who may pay additional for the benefits package which includes healthcare, retirement benefits and payments to those already retired, it comes out to over $70 per employee. That is significant and lessened by 30% in Canada and much more then that in Mexico which have local but non cohesive unions with little leverage, makes these areas much more desirable for automakers.
. There seems to be no mass exodus to the U.S. auto maker plants from Canada because of higher taxes for healthcare.
A competitive advantage is a combination of wage rates, productivity, infrastructure costs, taxation, health acre costs, and government incentives.
Canada’s advantage used to be a 62 cent dollar, “free healthcare”, very high productivity and quality, low absenteeism, and low energy input costs. The health care was not entirely free; companies still had to provide employees with dental, drug, eyeglasses and some other insurance, but the medical cost advantage over the US was at least $12 per hour. Under those condition, workers enjoyed high wages and benefits and the country produced 3.2 million motor vehicles per year while the domestic market absorbed about half that number, resulting in yearly automotive trade surplus of $32 billion dollars.
The advantage partially disappeared with a rising dollar and wage cuts smaller than those in the US for new workers. The productivity and quality are still there, and the fully integrated parts supply industry located around the Great Lakes make for a very efficient logistics situation. Canada still produces around 2 million motor vehicles yearly and excels in low volume high quality projects. Indeed, some models made there are exported to Japan which has the world’s fussiest customers when it comes to details.
By comparison, car manufacturing in Britain has stopped except for Japanese plants (Nissan) and some specialty models like the Mini, Jaguar, Land Rover and Rolls Royce.
Ford transferred engine and car manufacturing from England to Cologne, Germany where wages and benefit are higher, but productivity was vastly superior! GM did likewise; the “Vauxhall” I rented in England on my last holiday was entirely made in Germany (Opel engineering), but nowhere could I find the manufacturing location. This was done to save British faces and sensibilities.
Just the same, making low end mass produced cars in high wage countries is difficult, and most Volkswagens for North America are now made in Mexico, while the Brazilian operations cover Latin America.
The car business has truly globalized and China will be the next major player.
Gosh, did I get my string pulled.
That article about the poor woman in Queretaro who gets paid around $295 USD a month is 100% pure agenda article by a reporter. I live in a small, Third World village where the cost of living is very low. The men who work for me get around $500 a month, depending upon their skill level of course, but for what here is considered as semi-skilled manual labor. That reporter was out looking until she found such a person. She could have found factory employees with their own cars and computers and nice houses and kids going to college if she wanted.
I associate with people across the socioeconomic spectrum in Mexico. This woman works for a supplier, who sells parts to the assembly plants on a competitive basis. The factory assembly workers are considered well employed.
Similar suppliers in the US also pay much less than factory workers. To use supplier employees to present a false image of very low pay for car assembly workers is akin to what was done recently to ROLLING STONE magazine by an agenda reporter.
Odds are very high she dropped out of school after primary school, roughly 5th grade. Such people don’t do well in Mexico.
And, divorced in Mexico doesn’t always mean what it does in the USA. I could say more, but this is not the board for that discussion.
My point is, this woman is at the bottom of the food chain. This is not typical of auto factory workers at all. But, the reporter wants you to think so. Mexican crop workers, working under the sun in the truck farming fields get almost as much as she does.
I bought a newspaper on 16 April. There were three articles relevant to the auto industry in that newspaper.
First, Audi of Puebla announced 18 job openings. Nine of them are for industrial Engineers. I happen to have one English class with four students. All four, two women and two men, are studying for their Industrial Engineer licenses. So, I clipped that article and gave it to them Friday.
Second, Toyota announced a BILLION DOLLAR (not pesos) investment in Guanajuato. I guess that tells us where the production is moving from Canada, no?
And, Ford announced a more than one billion dollar investment in their Chihuahua factory. That article mentioned future production of three cylinder motors, but did not specifically say they would be produced in Chihuahua.