ERLANGER, KY-Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America has announced that it will invest an additional $50 million at its San Antonio plant, currently under construction, to increase the facility's overall production capacity to 50,000 vehicles per year.

This additional investment will boost the total cost of the plant to $850 million and enable it to produce 200,000 vehicles annually. The facility is scheduled to begin production of the Tundra full-size pickup truck in late 2006.

According to Toyota, the additional capacity, which is being made through machinery and line-spacing modifications, will allow the company to respond more quickly to increased demand. Making the additional investment now while the plant is still under construction will make the upgrades less costly.

Toyota has not yet decided whether it will expand the plant's workforce beyond the 2,000 it originally planned to employ.

Including the San Antonio plant, Toyota plans to have the capacity to build 1.81 million cars and trucks, 1.44 million engines and 600,000 automatic transmissions per year in North America by 2008.