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Post-earthquake, Toyota prepares to reopen some plants in Japan

Toyota will restart vehicle production at most of its closed factories in Japan next week, but the factories that build the Mirai and many Lexus models will remain closed through at least April 28 and possibly longer. The earthquakes around the city of Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu forced the automaker to stop most of its assembly throughout the country due to a lack of parts supply. Toyota will reopen the plants in phases from April 25 to 28. However, the Motomachi factory with its LFA works, which makes the Mirai, and the Miyata factory will remain closed. These sites also build the Lexus NX, RX, ES, GS, and CT, according to Toyota. The automaker didn't say when production would begin again or how this would affect vehicle supply. "In the update, we received this morning from TMC, they said that at this stage it is too soon to tell what the impact on production will be, so we can't say yet whether there might be vehicle shortages in the US," spokesperson Aaron Fowles told Autoblog. While the quakes were focused on Kyushu, they damaged Aisin Seiki factories, which supplied parts to Toyota plants across the country. The automaker worked with its partner to import the necessary components from China and Mexico, and Aisin started moving molds from the damaged plants to operational ones in Japan, which gets production under way sooner. Automotive News Europe estimates the week of lost production cuts total assembly by 90,000 vehicles. It could cost Toyota the equivalent of $458.2 million to $641.5 million. The company could make up some of the losses through overtime. Toyota says these plans are subject to change because on ongoing tremors in the region, which could cause more damage. Reuters reported there was a magnitude 5.5 aftershock in the Kumamoto area on April 19. So far, the quakes have killed at least 47 people and around 100,000 people have moved to evacuation centers. Toyota to Restart Production on Vehicle Assembly Lines in Japan from April 25 Apr. 20, 2016 Toyota City, Japan, April 20, 2016-Between April 25 and 28, Toyota will restart production on most of its vehicle assembly lines in Japan. On April 17, Toyota announced that, due to parts shortages resulting from the severe earthquakes that struck Japan's island of Kyushu last week, production would be suspended on almost all of its vehicle assembly lines in stages between April 18 and 23.

2014 Toyota Corolla coming Thursday, now with LED headlamps

Here's what we know about the redesigned 2014 Toyota Corolla: It will have "aggressive new styling" with "available seventeen-inch alloy wheels" an "available touch screen audio" system and "available LED headlights."
We know all of this because Toyota has seen fit to release a small assortment of teaser images of the 2014 Corolla, with those descriptions attached. The latest to hit the web shows LED lighting clusters, which, to Toyota's credit, don't appear to merely mimic designs already seen in the automotive world.
We should point out that the headlights do share a link to the units seen on the Furia Concept that was supposed to foreshadow the next Corolla, though the most interesting bits - namely the honeycomb inner pattern - have been chucked while the somewhat trapezoidal main units remain intact.

Toyota, Kaley Cuoco grant wishes in Super Bowl XLVII ad

For viewers who plan on watching the Super Bowl only for the commercials, here's one for you to enjoy ahead of time. As we saw in the teaser video that Toyota released last week, will be making the transition from Big Bang to The Big Game as a wish-granting genie in a commercial for the 2013 Toyota RAV4.
Though not as entertaining as the actual teaser for this commercial, it still garnered a couple chuckles from the Autoblog crew. We won't spoil it for you, but a word of advice: if Cuoco ever shows up in your driveway granting you wishes, we'd suggest you be very clear what you want... and enunciate.
If you want to see the commercial before this Sunday's game, we have the video (and an accompanying press release) posted after the jump.