Toyota Revamps Its Biggest Car Plant for Hybrid SUVs
The factory in Kentucky is preparing itself for a post-sedan era.
A factory worker practices installing parts on a preproduction hybrid RAV4.
Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
Toyota Motor Corp.’s largest plant in the world sits on 1,300 acres surrounded by rolling fields of bluegrass in rural Kentucky. With floor space equal to about 170 football fields, the Georgetown factory houses more than 2,000 industrial robots, 6 cafeterias, 2 paint shops, and an indoor basketball court. Walking down crowded aisles between parts bins and half-assembled cars, plant manager Susan Elkington scans the facility, obsessed with finding more open space. “I talk a lot about space,” she says. “If you want something new, you need space first.” Say for room to build a RAV4 sport utility vehicle, which isn’t presently built in Georgetown but Elkington expects will be starting in January.
The 48-year-old engineer was tapped to run the factory last year, and her first order of business has been to add the gas-electric hybrid version of the popular SUV to one of the plant’s three assembly lines. Retrofitting a Camry sedan assembly line for the RAV4 is part of a company mandate to update Toyota’s oldest North American plant with newer technology, more efficient processes, and fresher products. “We want to continue to be competitive, and sometimes it’s very hard to compete against newer plants,” Elkington says.