Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. will invest a combined $1.2 billion to expand production in Latin America amid growing regional and export demand.
Toyota is spending $600 million on a new car plant in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, the company said in a statement, and Nissan is spending the same amount to expand Mexican production to build three new models, Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn said in Mexico City yesterday.
Mexican vehicle production more than doubled in June from a year earlier as the country exported a record number of vehicles, mostly to the U.S. and Europe. Earlier this month General Motors Co. said sales in Brazil may surge 68 percent to 1 million vehicles by 2014 as growth in Latin America's largest economy stokes demand.
Toyota will start building 70,000 units a year of a new compact car from the second half of 2012 at the Sao Paulo plant. Nissan will produce 300,000 units of the March compact, a four- door sedan and a five-door multipurpose vehicle a year in Mexico, 80 percent of which will be distributed in the Americas, Ghosn said. Production of the March will begin next year, he said.
Twenty percent of the new models will be sold in Mexico, Ghosn said, boosting Nissan's 23.5 percent market share there. Nissan has the largest share in Mexico and was the No. 1 producer of vehicles there last year, with 355,414 units.
"This market share is not only sustainable but should continue to grow," Ghosn told reporters in Mexico City.
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