CEO Jim Lentz: 75 percent of Toyota’s 4,000 U.S. employees may make move to Plano

As many as 75 percent of Toyota's 4,000 U.S. employees may make the move to the company’s new North American headquarters in Plano, CEO Jim Lentz said Monday.

The number is based on early, informal responses from employees, Lentz said at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

The numbers are higher than the roughly 60 percent the company had loosely anticipated, Lentz said. If the 75 percent rate holds, it would mean about 3,000 employees move to Plano, leaving about 1,000 new jobs to be filled, Lentz said, according to a Dallas Morning News report from the auto show.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, has completed an organizational structure for the consolidation in west Plano and is now asking employees in California, Kentucky and New York whether they plan to relocate.

Toyota is setting up its North American headquarters at the 100-acre site in Plano. The company previously has not had an official North American headquarters, although most of the top corporate executives have been based in Torrance, California. The company has asked all of its 4,000 employees in various divisions to make the move.

The Toyota campus will be about 2 million square feet and have a sticker price topping $350 million, Lentz said.

A small group of "pioneer" Toyota employees already have moved to Plano, with most of the rest set to begin relocating in April 2017 and continuing throughout the rest of the year.

Toyota recently announced that the company manufactured a total of 2,035,028 vehicles in 2015, including 1,933,702 engines in North America last year.