Riken's market share about piston ring is more than 50% in Japan, so most Japanese auto manufacturers stop production of engines.

Ken@Japan

A 2 hour news show this morning, and it took them 1.5 hours to actually talk about this story after the "teaser" at the beginning of the show... *sigh* I really hate the news sometimes. 30 seconds on priuschat and I found out what happened

Now, if they had only set up lines in Fremont, Georgetown, or Princeton, this would have less impact....

Another news from Japanese news paper.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/...0707190368.html

Ken@Japan

Ken, that article is no longer available, or asahi.com isn't working right.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Bill Merchant @ Jul 21 2007, 04:56 PM) [snapback]482705[/snapback]</div>

Sorry about that. It seems asahi.com deleted the article.

Anyway, all 12 auto manufacturers in Japan stop production these days.
Toyota sent 330 facility related engineers/workers to recover/fix the Riken's facility.
There are some info from Riken themself...
http://www.riken.co.jp/e/index.html

Additional info from asahi.com in Japanese...
http://www.asahi.com/business/update/0719/...0707190562.html
http://www.asahi.com/business/update/0719/...0707190571.html

Ken@Japan

Follow-up to the news...
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/...0707230648.html

Good news is...
On July 23rd, the ring supplier, Riken Corp., resumed partial production Monday in quake-hit Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture.

On July 24th, Toyota Motor Corp. plans to resume production today at 11 of 12 plants forced to shut down Thursday after the July 16 Niigata Prefecture earthquake destroyed a key engine parts supplier.

The automaker will use piston rings it has in stock.

Bad news is...
Operations at Toyota's Tsutsumi plant in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, which assembles Prius hybrid sedans and other models, will remain halted for now.

Ken@Japan

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ken1784 @ Jul 24 2007, 07:59 AM) [snapback]484010[/snapback]</div>

That is bad news!
I'm waitiung for my Prius. Estimated delivery has been 14. September. My local sales contact is on vacation, so I cannot check wether he's heard anything about delays.

He did mention earlier that he thought my Prius would be built in either Belgium or Turkey, but I thought the Prius is only built in Japan. Anyone who knows anything about this?

My local sales contact has only worked with Toyota for a couple of months, so he is not too deep into the workings. I have told him a couple of nice-to-know things about the Prius and he's been very thankful. By reading PriusChat I think I know more about the Prius than many Toyota salespersons here in Norway.


Stein

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(skanDALE @ Jul 24 2007, 04:15 PM) [snapback]484032[/snapback]</div>

Please be patient.
I think it'll be only one week delay at most.

AFAIK, There are three plant for Prius production.
One in China only for Chinese market.
Two in Japan, Toyota Tsustumi plant and Toyota Auto Body Fujimatsu plant, for the rest of the world.

Ken@Japan

Lucky me, I got my Prius just in time!

News update as of July 25.

One of Prius factory, Toyota Auto Body Fujimatsu plant, already resumed production on July 24.
The other factory, Toyota Tsutsumi plant resumed production on July 25.
It seems the parts supply volume is not enough yet, therefore factories don't manufacture vehicles in over time hours.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/atmoney/news/20070724i312.htm (Japanese news article)

Ken@Japan