Toyota to Take 5 Percent Stake in Mazda and Build Joint U.S. Plant<br />TOKYO — Toyota said on Friday that it was taking a 5 percent stake in Mazda, another Japanese automaker, and<br />that the companies would jointly build an assembly plant in the United States and would pool resources on new technologies.<br />“In the future, mobility won’t belong only to carmakers,” Mr. Toyoda said at a news conference announcing the Mazda stake, noting<br />that Silicon Valley was increasingly turning its gaze to the auto industry, looking to disrupt areas including design, manufacturing and retail distribution.<br />Although plans for that spending predated the election of President Trump, the announcement was widely seen as a response to Mr. Trump’s vows to promote American manufacturing, pushing back against countries like Japan<br />that have large trade surpluses with the United States.<br />Akio Toyoda, chief executive of Toyota, said in January that the carmaker would invest $10 billion in the United States over the next five years.<br />The alliance between Toyota and Mazda represents a small<br />but significant step in the consolidation of the Japanese car industry, where a half-dozen producers compete for customers and capital.<br />In an era of soaring development costs and unsettling technological shifts — especially the emergence of battery-powered<br />and self-driving cars — many smaller producers fear they lack the resources required to keep up.<br />Even Toyota, one of the world’s largest producers of vehicles, with an output of 10 million units<br />a year, has been accused by some critics of falling behind in research and development.
