INDUSTRY
Automotive
Powering Alabama’s economy for over a century.
Running on All Cylinders
Before 1993, the automotive industry in Alabama was nonexistent. That year, Mercedes-Benz decided to build its first passenger vehicle factory outside of Germany. Since then, international car makers, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai, chose sites in Alabama, producing about 1.6 million automotive engines in 2018. Alabama is set to produce ten different passenger vehicle models in 2019 alone and employs nearly 40,000 in automotive manufacturing jobs.
The needle keeps moving higher for the automotive industry in Alabama as Mazda Toyota begins construction on a $1.6 billion assembly plant in Huntsville. As the number three auto exporting state in the nation with transportation equipment being the number one export category, numerous automotive suppliers have decided to build facilities to support Alabama’s booming automotive industry. Their expanding operations have attracted a vast constellation of parts suppliers with factories located throughout the state, expanding the depth and capabilities of this critically important sector of Alabama’s economy.