[5][6] GM as a company was departmentalized (design, manufacturing) as per Henry Ford's division of labor, but without the necessary communication and collaboration between the departments.

There was an adversarial relationship between workers and plant supervisors, with management not considering the employees' view on production, and quantity was preferred over quality.

[6] By the early 1980s, the adversarial relationship had deteriorated to the point where employees drank alcohol, smoked marijuana (at the time, an illegal activity), were frequently absent (enough so that the production line could not be started), and even committed petty acts of sabotage such as putting "Coke bottles inside the door panels, so they'd rattle and annoy the customer.

[6] At about the same time, GM was struggling to profitably build high-quality and fuel-efficient small cars that consumers demanded after the energy crisis of the 1970s.

Consumers started turning to foreign automakers for these vehicles, prompting the U.S. Congress to consider import restrictions to protect the domestic auto industry.

[9] For Toyota, the factory gave the company its first manufacturing base in North America allowing it to avoid tariffs on imported vehicles[10] and saw GM as a partner that could show them how to navigate the American labor environment, particularly relations with the United Auto Workers union.

[5][6] Workers who made the transition identified the emphasis on quality and teamwork by Toyota management as what motivated a change in work ethic.

[5][6] Among the cultural changes were the same uniform, parking and cafeterias for all levels of employment in order to promote a team concept, and a no-layoff policy.

[11]: 14 In January 1995, NUMMI began producing the Toyota Tacoma, a pickup truck designed exclusively for the North American market.

[20] GM executives, particularly CEO John F. Smith Jr., attempted to spread the Toyota Production System to other assembly plants,[18][21][22] but it proved largely unsuccessful.

[29][30] Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman, city officials and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lobbied the automakers to find a product and keep NUMMI open.

[38][39][40] On August 27, 2009, Toyota announced that it would also discontinue production at NUMMI by March 2010, marking the first time the company had ever closed a factory.

[51] On March 10, 2010, Aurica Motors announced that it intended to raise investment capital and garner federal economic stimulus funds to help retrain the workers and retool the facility for production of electric vehicles.

In exchange, Tesla agreed to partner with Toyota on the "development of electric vehicles, parts, and production system and engineering support."