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Toyota moving US headquarters to Plano, Texas

It's official, Toyota is relocating its US operations to Plano, TX. And it won't be a symbolic 'all ranch and no cattle' gesture - the Japanese automaker, whose headquarters have been in California since 1957, has decided to base nearly all of its operations in the Lone Star State, including much of its engineering, finance and sales and marketing teams.
The move, which will see the establishment of a new headquarters campus in the Dallas suburb will not only affect employees at the company's current Torrance, CA Toyota Motor Sales USA campus, it will also touch the lives of thousands of employees at the company's other operations, including 1,000 workers at Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America in Erlanger, KY and some New York-based staff as well. The Toyota Technical Center in Ann Arbor, MI is not facing relocation, however, and it actually stands to gain responsibilities as Toyota overhauls its US org chart. Toyota says that its reorganization will affect about 4,000 employees in total.
According to Automotive News, while Toyota is adopting an "'everyone is invited' stance for the relocation," some attrition is expected from employees who aren't interested in relocating southward from the Golden State. For its part, the automaker is reportedly making expenses-paid visits to Plano available to full-time staffers and spouses to help them make the relocation decision, as well as a lump-sump payment if they decide to go through with the move.

The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.

Toyota Camry Hybrid SE adds a dash of limited-edition sport

For drivers who want to benefit from the increased efficiency of a hybrid sedan but who don't want to look like they'd rather be hugging trees, Toyota has just announced its 2014.5 Camry Hybrid SE Limited Edition.
The SE LTD combines the exterior bits and pieces that make the SE look sportier than other Camry models with the 2.5-liter, four-cylinder engine, electric motor and nickel metal hydride battery pack of the Camry Hybrid. That means the Hybrid SE offers up 200 combined system horsepower to the front wheels, and we'd expect it to be rated at the same 40 miles per gallon city and 38 highway of the Camry XLE Hybrid.
Only 5,000 units will be produced between February and June of 2014, with an asking price of $27,845, which is about $700 more expensive than the base Camry Hybrid LE or $2,620 less than the Hybrid XLE that Toyota says shares a similar level of equipment. Sounds like a fair shake to us. Scroll down below for the complete press release.