Lexus ES Production Moving To Kentucky
Published: April 19th, 2013
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Production of the Lexus ES will move from Toyota’s plant in Kyushu, Japan to a plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, where its platform twin, the Toyota Avalon, is built.
Previously, the Lexus RX was the only Lexus vehicle made outside Japan, produced at a plant in Ontario. The move to Kentucky was no doubt helped along by a $146.5 million “tax incentive package”. The Wall Street Journal reports that the expansion taking place to accommodate Lexus will result in 570 new jobs.
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It's going to be interesting watching this plant over the next few years. Being from the area and working as a contractor on occasion I have gotten to know a lot of the employees there from upper management all the way to production team members. The plant has passed its twenty year anniversary and a surprising amount of the employees have been there since the beginning. Toyota has been offering up early retirement packages to move out some of the expensive old guard(That's not the official company line but it's fairly obvious what they're doing). They aren't being replaced with new full-time permanent employees but with temps from a local employment agency for far less money than factory employees make. My guess is that the 750 new jobs will all be from the temp service as well. The easy jobs the long-timers work to obtain to get off the assembly line are being given to the contract workers. Jobs like fork lift and tugger operators. Those are much less costly to train a person to do as opposed to the more specialized and quality-focused assembly positions that the seasoned workers perform. The turn-over rate for the temps is pretty high from what I understand so spending the effort to teach them to do certain tasks is a risk. I know I wouldn't do that type of work for twelve dollars an hour or so. I'm not sure what Toyota's long term strategy is but I'm sure Bob King is watching closely.
I've never understood the point of this car. For Lexus buyers looking for RWD competition with the 3-series and 5-series, there is the IS and GS. The ES is a FWD sedan that is not much different than a loaded Camry. What market is there for this car?
I thought the new ES twin is the Avalon??
Cue the "Now I'll never buy one they'll ruin the quality by building in 'merca" crowd.