2023: the Year of Toyota

Last year at this time, we named 2022 “The Year of the Megasite.”

Our criteria is admittedly subjective. We look at the year’s biggest developments and ask, “What’s a recurring theme that has such an outsize impact on North Carolina’s business environment it can define an entire year?”

Or put another way, what will people remember about 2023?

As we sat around a conference room table, the answer came to many of us simultaneously. One company has dominated the business media. One company looks to be transforming an entire swath of North Carolina. One company looks to be planting roots so deep they may well yield growth for decades.

2023 is the Year of Toyota.

---

On a windy December morning in 2021, the state’s top leaders crowded into a rustic living room in a log cabin surrounded by forest at the bottom of a winding dirt driveway in Liberty, NC.

It was a staging area about a mile from a large tent constructed in the middle of a field, under which hundreds of reporters, politicians, and economic developers girded themselves against the windblown dust waiting for show time.

That day, to great fanfare, Toyota executives joined Senate Leader Phil Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore, and Gov. Roy Cooper to announce that North Carolina had finally landed an automaker. Toyota would invest $1.3 billion to build a manufacturing plant with four production lines to churn out enough batteries to power 800,000 vehicles annually.

In remarks at the event, state leaders hinted that there might just be more announcements in the future.

“Today marks the beginning of a mutually beneficial partnership with the Tar Heel state as we embark on our journey to achieve carbon neutrality and provide mobility for all,” Toyota’s North America CEO Ted Ogawa said in a statement at the time.

Beginning was the operative word.

---

In the 24 months since, Toyota’s planned investment in the Liberty plant has increased more than ten-fold.

On October 31, 2023, Toyota announced yet another expansion in its North Carolina plans, adding an additional $8 billion and 3,000 employees to the project. The total now sits at $13.9 billion and 5,000 jobs to service a seven million-square-foot campus with 14 battery production lines.

In addition to the jobs and economic growth it will bring to the region, Toyota has quickly established itself as a premiere community partner. The company has made seven-figure philanthropic contributions to the area, focusing intensely on education and workforce development.

We offered this analysis in a previous piece about Toyota:

Planning for the long-term is enmeshed in Toyota’s brand. For years, consumer satisfaction surveys have ranked Toyota vehicles at or near the top for long-term durability and reliability. Company leaders often talk about hiring employees “for life,” and their human resources strategy emphasizes “stable employment” as the “highest priority.”

The company’s senior executives have long prioritized sustainable growth – former CEO Katsuaki Watanbe said 15 years ago, “Becoming number one isn’t about being the world leader in terms of how many automobiles we manufacture or sell in a year, or about generating the most sales revenues or profits. Being number one is about being the best in the world in terms of quality on a sustained basis.”

And so Toyota has stayed in the news and in the conversations among the business and political chattering classes by simply following through on its core identity.

We wrote that before the company’s latest $8 billion announcement. Clearly, Toyota’s long-term plans for North Carolina have only grown since then.

Everybody’s talking about Toyota. The company is pouring money into North Carolina, and by all accounts plans to stay here for a very long time. Its planned investment in the state more than doubled just 10 weeks ago.

For these reasons, we’re calling 2023 the Year of Toyota.

Thank you for reading today’s piece. Tomorrow, TRC Nexus will preview the National Political Landscape ahead of the 2024 election.