SEOUL: Motor vehicle exports from Tennessee have more than doubled since 2000 with the automotive industry emerging as perhaps the state’s largest export sector, a new study shows.
Vehicles accounted for 8.5 percent of all state exports in 2014, up from 3.6 percent in 2000, according to the Middle Tennessee State University study.
“Much of this growth is rather recent,” said Dr. Steven Livingston, a research associate at MTSU’s Business and Economic Research Center. “The value of the state’s vehicle exports has virtually doubled in the past two years. The growth in exports of motor vehicles has far outpaced overall Tennessee export growth.”
Tennessee has three auto assembly plants with Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Nissan in Smyrna and General Motors in Spring Hill; and Nissan and Infiniti have engine plants on the same site in Decherd, Tenn., which also build engines for export. The Infiniti facility assembles engines for Mercedes-Benz, as well as its own vehicles.
The state also has more than 900 parts-supplier plants, many of them in the Knoxville area.
Parts exports have grown dramatically from just $2 billion in 2000 to near the $7.5 billion mark last year, the MTSU study said.
But beyond parts, completed vehicles valued at $2.8 billion were shipped outside of the country last year, the study shows.
Most of them came from the Nissan plant in Smyrna, whose exports have grown significantly over the past two years.
The Smyrna plant now builds two vehicles that until recently were assembled in Japan — the Nissan Leaf all-electric car, which moved to Tennessee in late 2012; and the Nissan Rogue compact crossover, whose newest generation began production here in late 2013.
“Virtually all of the vehicles we produce in the U.S. plants are now being exported,” Nissan manufacturing spokesman Justin Saia said.
Nissan’s U.S. exports rose by 29 percent to more than 129,000 vehicles last year — “an all-time record,” he said, with most of them coming from the Smyrna plant and the rest from the Nissan factory in Canton, Miss.
“We fully expect that number to increase again this year,” Saia said. “We also eclipsed one million total U.S. exports (this year). The Smyrna, Tenn., plant currently exports to more than 60 global markets.”
Nissan exports vehicles from Smyrna to South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
Smyrna is the exclusive production site for both the Pathfinder and its Infiniti cousin, the QX60. Both of these crossovers, which share their basic architecture, are sold outside the United States.
Nissan in 2013 began building Pathfinders with right-hand drive (the steering wheel is on the right) for export to Australia and New Zealand.
“Shipping right-hand drive vehicles halfway around the world from Tennessee at one time may have seemed exotic to us, but now it’s an increasingly common event on our path to becoming a net exporter,” Saia said.
With the growth of vehicle exports, they now account for one-third of all Tennessee automotive exports, Livingston said.
Volkswagen of America spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan said the Chattanooga-made Passat is exported to Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Middle East. The number of Passat exports last year wasn’t immediately available, but she said the figure is counted in Chattanooga production numbers.
“That’s sourcing for other markets,” Ginivan said. VW’s Chattanooga plant opened in 2011.
Tennessee is the seventh-ranked state for car exports nationally, up from 11th in 2000, the study showed. The state exported just $400 million in vehicles in 2000 compared to the $2.8 billion figure in 2014.
Other key Tennessee export sectors are medical and computer equipment, basic chemicals, and synthetic fibers and filaments, according to the study.
