Toyota Motor Corp. issued an unsettling warning to Kentucky workers building its top-selling Camry sedan: Cut costs now or face an uncertain future.
The automaker can build a Camry in Japan, ship it all the way to Kentucky and make more money selling that car than from one built at Toyota's factory in the state, the plant's president told employees in a 2 1/2 minute-long internal video obtained by Bloomberg News.
"I'm not sharing this to scare you, but to heighten your awareness of the current risk we now have," Wil James, who has managed the plant for more than seven years, said in the video dated this month. He said Toyota isn't planning to close the factory and continues to invest in it for the next 30 years. "But all of this is on the assumption that we can make as much progress in cost reduction and efficiency as we've made in quality and safety."
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