New Production Restart Dates for Toyota, Hyundai

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

Toyota and Hyundai are now aiming to bring assembly plants back online later than initially planned. News of the shutdown extension comes as other automakers, notably Fiat Chrysler, Honda, and Nissan, announced a targeted return to work in the first week of May.

Toyota first said April 6th would be the return date, pushing that back to April 17th in late March after the scope and duration of the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the U.S. became clear. April 20th was then floated.

Now, Toyota says another two weeks will go by before workers return to the automaker’s four U.S. assembly plants and various powertrain facilities, and the same goes for Canadian and Mexican manufacturing sites. May 4th suddenly seems like a popular choice in the industry.

The company says that workers will be asked to forgo two days of pay during the extension, or give up two paid days of leave. Roughly 5,000 Toyota workers are employed by outside agencies; these workers will not receive pay until work restarts, though health benefits will continue to flow.

“We will continue to monitor the situation and take appropriate action in a timely manner,” the automaker said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the tentative April 13th restart date floated by Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama has fallen by the wayside. The automaker now says workers will return to its Montgomery plant on May 4th, though the automaker hasn’t set the date in stone. During the extension, workers are asked to draw from paid vacation time or leave, with health benefits maintained. Those unable to tap into such reserves will have to apply for employment insurance benefits.

When production does return, Hyundai says measures will be in place to ensure worker safety, including “pre-screening for elevated temperatures, ensuring physical distancing guidelines throughout the facility, expanding cleaning protocols and increasing distribution of health and safety materials.”

[Image: Toyota]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • SCE to AUX SCE to AUX on Apr 09, 2020

    "... increasing distribution of health and safety materials" Just thought of this... if health care workers can't get masks, etc to do their job, how will tens of thousands of returning workers in other industries get them when they return to work?

  • MoDo MoDo on Apr 09, 2020

    They'll only be down as long as current inventories last

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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