In a major switcheroo, the facility will now build trucks and the mighty Escalade.
Don’t look now, but General Motors is pulling the plug on building EVs at its Orion facility in Michigan. Confirming the news yesterday, it will instead assemble an array of light-duty pickup trucks and the Cadillac Escalade, said to be all part of a $4 billion push to meet demand for gasoline-powered vehicles in this country. Local media, specifically The Freep (Detroit Free Press) were among the first to report on the story.
Alert readers will recall the factory was most recently utilized to produce the now discontinued Chevrolet Bolt EV, a car which followed the long GM tradition of getting a car right and then cancelling the thing. Once that machine was shuffled to the side, plans were put forth to use the plant as a production centre for all-electric variants of the Silverado and Sierra, thus replacing an affordable electric vehicle with one that has a much higher sticker price. At the time, it was mused the Bolt was being killed because it didn’t employ the don’t-call-it-Ultium architecture.
Top brass expect the plant to begin cranking out trucks and SUVs sometime in the 2027 calendar year. That roughly aligns with the rumoured product planning cadence for light-duty pickups at GM, which suggests the Silverado/Sierra half-tons will be revamped around that time. Starting production of these rigs in Michigan reshores some assembly to America from Mexico, since a portion of GM’s half-ton trucks are currently built in Mexico. Unrelated in terms of product but not in terms of assembly, Blazer production is expected to move from Mexico to Tennessee, as well.
GM’s choice to build more gassers shouldn’t be a total surprise, not with the White House pulling the plug on EV tax credits and slashing penalties for running afoul of CAFE regs to zero dollars. Reuters estimates General Motors paid about $128 million in penalties for 2016 and 2017.
[Image: General Motors]
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