Toyota And PSA Confirm End Of Joint City Car Production From 2021

Confirming an earlier report, PSA and Toyota have announced the end of their joint city car production in Europe from 2021.

As part of the agreement, Toyota will take financial ownership of the joint venture operations in the Czech Republic. From January 2021, the Toyota Peugeot Citroën Automobile Czech (TPCA) plant in Kolin will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Europe, joining the seven other facilities the automaker already operates in Europe.

Toyota said it would maintain production of the current generation A-segment models for the two companies, without specifying for how long. At present, the plant builds the Peugeot 108, Citroën C1 and Toyota Aygo. The Japanese automaker said it “intends to continue production and employment in the future at the Kolin plant.”

The TPCA joint venture was set up in 2002 and included a review clause allowing each partner to reconsider their shareholding.

Besides the announcement regarding the city car plant, the two companies said they would expand their collaboration in other areas. More specifically, from the end of 2019 PSA will start supplying a C-segment van to Toyota for sale in Europe.

The unnamed model will be built at PSA’s Vigo plant, which currently assembles the Peugeot Partner and Citroën Berlingo, among other models. That likely means it will be based on the latest-generation Partner/Berlingo/Combo unveiled earlier this year. PSA and Toyota already collaborate on mid-size light-commercial vehicles; since 2012, the French automaker has been building the Proace for Toyota at its Hordain plant in France.

The two companies said the aim of the deepening collaboration is to benefit “from development and production cost optimization”, with Toyota noting that it would participate in the development and industrial investment costs for the future light-commercial vehicle.