The situation in Japan for the country’s automobile industry appears to be much worse than originally believed with many carmakers struggling to resume domestic output following the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that killed thousands of people and damaged factories as well as infrastructure.
Following yesterday’s announcement from Toyota, Subaru said today that it will extend closures at all five of its automobile assembly plants in Japan until Monday, March 28. The automaker’s parent company Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. (FHI) had previously announced its production suspension until March 24.
On a separate note, the company said that it restarted production of parts for overseas production on Wednesday, March 23 and production of spare parts on Thursday, March 24, with some components available for production.