Update On The Toyota Announcement About Leaving California

Updates

May 10, 2014: two interesting items that don't have anything to do with the original post except that they both relate to Toyota. First, do you all remember this back in 2012: Toyota bails on the all-electric vehicle, saying it had misread the consumer. And then this item today: car sales are doing so well in the US, Subaru needs all the US factory capacity it can find. Therefore, it has asked Toyota leave its Indiana plant. Toyota will move Camry production from Indiana to Kentucky. 

 

Original Post

From the blog earlier today:

Five weeks ago, Torrance, CA, Mayor Frank Scotto was celebrating the opening of the city's new athletic fields with officials of Toyota Motor Corp. 

The city's biggest employer and a prime benefactor had given a half-million dollars toward the project. This week, Mr. Scotto has had a less pleasant duty to perform: Figuring out how Torrance can fill the 101-acre hole the giant auto maker will leave behind when it vacates its sprawling campus and moves 3,000 jobs to a new North American headquarters in Texas. 

Toyota's decision to consolidate much of its U.S. operations in Plano, Texas, by 2017, officially announced Monday, caught Mr. Scotto by surprise. Toyota's own employees in Torrance were informed just minutes after the mayor got a courtesy call. State of California officials, too, had been in the dark about the move, which Toyota had been exploring for the past year.

From CarpeDiem:

An interesting and revealing market-based measure of the relative attractiveness (and migration patterns) of the two states is to compare the cost of a one-way U-Haul truck going from California to Texas vs. the cost going in the other direction. To rent a 26-foot truck one-way, here are the current prices being quoted by U-Haul for June 18:

Torrance, CA to Plano, TX: $2,626
Plano, TX to Torrance, CA: $1,264

Los Angeles, CA to Dallas, TX: $2,558
Dallas TX to Los Angeles: $1,232

Bottom Line: The cost of a one-way U-Haul truck leaving California for Texas is more than twice the cost to rent that same truck going from Texas to California, suggesting that there are twice as many trucks and people leaving California for Texas than vice-versa. Based on the huge difference in demand for one-way truck rentals, there is a premium of more than 100% for Californians to rent trucks going to Texas, and large discounts for trucks going in the opposite direction to California. U-Haul’s market-based pricing seems to confirm the California exodus to Texas of jobs, people and businesses like Toyota and Occidental.