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a key point of Toyota's midterm strategic plan through 2025 is to determine whether to expand the San Antonio plant. The plant already is one of Toyota's fastest-moving factories worldwide, with a capacity of about 200,000 units, without overtime or Saturdays.

to build another line in San Antonio could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Plus, Toyota is still unsure if there's an additional 100,000 units of demand for its trucks -- the typical minimum volume for adding a new assembly line -- without resorting to costly incentives to push demand.

With truck demand returning, expansion is tempting

Toyota can produce a combined 250,000 Tundra full-sized and Tacoma compact pickups in San Antonio, running two shifts plus overtime and Saturdays, Fay said. Toyota's knockdown assembly plant in Tijuana, Mexico, can add another 50,000 Tacomas, but many of those trucks go to Mexico and Canada.

Assembly line tweaks could add about 7,000 units at each plant, Fay said. But that might not be enough.

Even if Tacoma sales were to stay flat next year, the combined pickup sales would exceed what San Antonio and Tijuana could produce for the United States. The quick rebound in pickup sales has caught Toyota by surprise.