Toyota crash-tests cars in York Township

Cars are crashed on purpose inside Toyota’s York Township research campus. Toyota says it is the company’s only crash-test site outside Japan. Before each hit, workers check the dummies and wire the car with sensors. Afterward, engineers study how the body and safety gear held up.

The York campus opened in 2008 as Toyota moved more of its North American car work to Michigan. The story had started much smaller. In 1972, Toyota bought an Ann Arbor garage so it could test exhaust near a federal lab. It formed the Toyota Technical Center five years later. The center moved to a larger Ann Arbor site in the early 1990s, then grew into York Township.

Teams in York plan cars, design parts, build test vehicles, and study safety. The campus is large enough to stand apart from the farm country around it, yet its mailing address still says Saline. That can hide how much of Toyota’s work is actually happening in York Township.

Car technology keeps changing. In 2023, Toyota announced a nearly $50 million battery lab for the York campus. The plan called for testing cells, modules, and full packs. The same place that learns from crashed cars is also preparing for electric ones.