At the same time, the majority of United States plants closed due to coronavirus will resume work soon.
The spread of coronavirus has not only weakened demand for cars and disrupted the supply chain of components. Large automobile construction sites, such as the joint Toyota and Mazda plant in Alabama (USA), also rose. The state governor announced quarantine earlier this month, and life in Alabama froze, but as it turned out, not for long. Today in this state there are three closed car assembly plants – Hyundai, Honda, Mercedes-Benz. The first two resume work on May 4, the German company’s enterprise opens on Monday, April 27. It is likely that work will begin on the construction site of a joint venture between Toyota and Mazda, but the plant will not be opened on time, which is why both companies will lose a lot, since the project is estimated at $ 1.6 billion. Toyota also extends the warranty of its cars due to the current situation
According to Asian Review, the partners delayed the opening of the plant in the second half of 2021, already extending the commissioning period by several months. Recall that the cooperation on the project Toyota and Mazda began in 2016. Initially, Toyota planned to produce a compact Corolla sedan here, but then the idea was redesigned. The plans of manufacturers – a crossover with a high share of unification. Experts not only do not exclude that both SUVs will be designed on the basis of common platform solutions, but also give a high probability to the badge-engineering option. In the first case, it is possible that the models will belong to different size classes. Meanwhile, it is still unclear whether the enterprise’s capacity of 300,000 units per year will be fully demanded, because the market in the USA is now unimportant.
By the way, if in the southern state there is Alabama complete clarity with the end of quarantine, then Michigan, bordering Canada, where the main car assembly plants are concentrated, until the situation has stabilized. Only four plants plan to resume operations in May, the rest, mainly GM, do not yet have a restart date. Recall that since 2009, the US market has conceded superiority to China in terms of sales of new cars, crossovers and pickups. In recent years, about 17 million new cars were sold in the United States, while in China this figure has reached almost 24 million. Mazda MX-30 could adopt rotary engine as range extender
Today, the vast majority of factories in China have already begun to work, although not at full capacity. LMC Automotive experts predict a 12% drop in sales in China, but this figure is likely to be much higher because the PRC market has been unstable in the past three years. First of all, sales of local “new” brands began to fall, under which the concerns offered inexpensive, and often frankly cheap (in terms of price and quality) crossovers for young people. As for the US market, until the factories resume their work and return to their previous production volumes, it makes no sense to give a forecast. In general, LMC Automotive predicts a 20% drop in global automotive production worldwide around the year 2020.