Toyota is quickly beginning to leverage the majority block of shares it holds in Subaru parent company, Fuji Heavy
Industries. A Japanese newspaper is reporting that a Fuji
Heavy production plant in Indiana will be tapped to produce 100,000 Toyota vehicles beginning in 2007. Toyota’s pres
Katsuaki Watanabe and Fuji Heavy pres Kyoji Takenaka will meet in early December for the first time to iron out the
arrangement.
The relationship between these two companies, however, is a two-way street. Toyota, for its part, will be
supplying Fuji Heavy with hybrid
systems and help train the acquired company’s engineers in the art of hybrid technology. Toyota may even absorb a few
Fuji Heavy engineers in its hybrid program, perhaps to further develop Subaru’s
turbo parallel hybrid system that marries a thin 10-kW
electric motor with the company’s 2.0L turbo-four.
Maybe we weren’t paying attention before but for all the time that GM owned its stake in Fuji Heavy had we ever seen
this level of cooperation and sharing between the two companies? Of course, the last thing GM would need right now is
more production capacity, but a turbo-hybrid would’ve been a useful component.
[via Motor Trend and Green Car Congress]