Honda, Mazda, Subaru keep plants closed until next week, Mitsubishi re-opens

Fuji Heavy Industries, the parent company of Subaru, originally planned on keeping plants shut down until Wednesday but that day has been bumped to Sunday, as the country continues to face power shortages as they dig out from the devastation. Mazda and Honda have made the same announcement, keeping their plants shut down until March 20th at the soonest. Even though Mazda’s plants are located well out of the areas of devastation in Japan, the impact on suppliers around the country coupled with the inadequate power supply has forced many automakers to halt production.

Toyota Motor Company also announced this morning that their 12 main production facilities would remain closed but their part production plants would begin opening next week to support the need for replacement parts around the world. These plants will also begin building parts for new cars once they have started with the OEM replacement components.

Mitsubishi opened their plants this morning with the intent of assessing the possibilities of production. Based on early reports, Mitsubishi’s facilities did not sustain any significant damages but the lack of vehicle components from outside suppliers and the power problems may slow their production attempts. Mitsubishi announced that they had enough parts on hand to produce vehicles through Thursday and once those parts were used up, they would join the rest of the Japanese auto industry in figuring out their next step.

The other problem affecting the entire Japanese auto industry and the decisions of the automakers whether or not to begin production is the amount of damage to export facilities. Some of the earliest images from the Japanese tsunami showed thousands of cars (which turned out to be Nissan and Infiniti models) stacked on top of each other like dominoes – and that was not the only export dock damaged by the massive wall of water that slammed into the Japanese coast.

TorqueNews will continue covering the impact on the Japanese auto industry, bringing you news as it breaks.

Source: Mazda, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Honda, Automotive News

Other Japanese Auto Industry News:
Toyota continues production stoppage until next Tuesday
GM donates $750,000 to Japanese earthquake relief efforts
Nissan updates the world on their post-earthquake status
US auto industry hit by supplier shortages in wake of Japanese Tsunami
Toyota update on damage done by the Japanese earthquake
Honda issues a statement on damages caused by the earthquake and tsunami
Toyota stock trading in New York affected by Japan earthquake