Recently I was rotating the tires on my Lexus which I bought new. The vehicle’s point of final assembly was Japan (as verified by the label inside the drivers side door). While rotating the tires I noticed that the Michelin tires (a French corporation) were manufactured in the USA.
Michelin has factories all over the world, many of them in Asia (Thailand, Japan and China). Michelin also has factories in the USA but they are in the Midwest and the South. There are none on the West Coast.
Did Lexus (Toyota) have these tires transported from the USA to Japan to be installed on the vehicle? That means the tires would have to have been transported to the West Coast for shipping or shipped through the Panama Canal to Japan.
Or,
Was the vehicle shipped to the USA without tires and they were installed after reaching the USA. I suppose the vehicle could have been set on a dolly. That would discourage theft.
Does anyone have anything factual to explain the situation? It seems strange and inefficient but maybe that is just the state of globalization.
There is no way for me to prove it but I know a fair amount about globalized manufacturing and I would have to say that the tires were sent to Japan for final assembly. The supply chain to build any complex device or piece of machinery is astounding. I have seen some supply and assembly charts for some products and it looks like one of those airline route charts in the airline magazines.
Remember that those cars with American tires were likely being sent to places other than the U.S. as well. Having parts end up back at the point of their origin is certainly not remarkable. Those big container ships can hold an amazing amount of stuff and it is more economical to ship vast quantities of a given it overseas than you may think.
Michelin has tire factories in Japan (as you stated). But these tires were manufactured in the United States, right? So they were not built in a Japanese factory.
Lexus/Toyota is definitely built in Japan.
If you ever investigate the way automobiles are shipped, I would put it down as near impossible that the car is shipped here without wheels. First, the cars are made and driven on top of a transporter to be taken to a processing point near a shipyard. Some of these vehicles (1 out of a 100 for arguments sake) are taken out on a test course to make sure that ‘batch’ is okay.
From there the vehicles are dropped off and probably inspected again. After a Japanese customs inspection, they are driven onto the ship. Once they read the United States they are driven off the ship to another processing center, where they are reinspected by various companies (EPA, Customs, Lexus of North America employees) and some are even test driven again to make sure that batch is okay.
From there they are driven onto the back of another transporter and driven to dealerships all over, where they are driven off, reinspected, and put up for sale.
I would assume it would be much more cost effective to ship the tires to Japan from the United States. As brianjedi stated, they are just thrown on the back of another shipping container and as Shagnasty said, those shipping containers hold ALOT of stuff.
Shipping stuff from the US to Asia should be extreamly cheap.
NPR did a story on a large container ship a while back. The Indian (so he sounded anyway) explained that the containers came from china filled with all manor of consumer and industrial goods, and returned [Thick Indian accent]“Filled to the brim with the finest available American atmosphere”[/TIA]
The containers and ships are making the voyage anyway, might as well put something inside them.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of the obvious answer – different markets require different tires, both legally and for different climates. So, logistically it’s easier to take N.A.-spec tires from North America, rather than outfitting your Michelin plants in N.A., France, Japan, and S.E. Asia to make tires for all multiple markets. What’s cheaper? Bring in tires from the USA, or outfitting a second line in your Japan plant for US-spec tires, and ignoring the overcapacity that would result in your US plant?
Without qualifiers this is not a true statement (look at the box on the left side for Toyota plant locations in North America). I seem to recall hearing that about 85% of Toyota’s US sales are assembled in Noth America.
I don’t have any figures for Lexus.
Maybe he meant Lexus, as part of Toyota, are all made in Japan? According to Wikipedia, only the RX350 is made in Cambridge Ontario. All other lexus models are made in Japan.
I’m inclined to go with the notion that the tires were made in the USA, containerized and sent to Japan. It didn’t/doesn’t seem reasonable that the car would be shipped without the tires that were sold with the car.
What really suprised me was that if Michelin was shipping tires from the USA to Japan that, with all of their worldwide factories, they don’t have one close to the West Coast. Undoubtedly, Lexus is going to require a high performance tire which can probably only be produced in only a limited number of factories. Nonetheless, it is quite a journey for a set of tires before they ever see their retail owner.