GM fast-tracks electric vehicle plans
Hiring in Ohio, recalling workers in Michigan
DETROIT – General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the company will bring new electric vehicles to market faster than anticipated as the automaker announced a major step forward in its self-driving car development.
GM is also making strides in hiring and calling back workers at two of its facilities.
GM said it has started hiring what will eventually be more than 1,000 workers at its new EV battery plant near GM’s former Lordstown Assembly factory in northeast Ohio. GM will start calling back workers to Factory ZERO in Detroit and Hamtramck starting early next year as it converts the facility to build EVs.
GM has said it would bring at least 20 new EVs to market by 2023. It has shown two of those: the Cadillac Lyriq SUV, due to market in 2022, and the GMC Hummer EV pickup, hitting the market late next year.
During an earnings call with analysts Thursday, Barra said GM will be bringing EVs to market faster than it had initially anticipated, crediting its strategic partnerships and investments in technology for having allowed it to speed up product development. Barra said future EVs will cross all of GM’s brands to include high-volume cars, too.
One of GM’s partnerships is with LG Chem in the joint venture Ultium Cells LLC.
The venture will mass-produce Ultium battery cells for electric vehicles and GM is building a 3 million-squarefoot plant for it that sits adjacent to GM’s former auto assembly plant near Lordstown.
GM shuttered Lordstown Assembly, which had made the Chevrolet Cruze compact car, last year as part of a costcutting restructuring of the company. GM transferred most of the thousands of workers there to other GM facilities across the country. GM sold the facility to electric truck maker Lordstown Motors last year.
But GM said Ultium Cells will create 1,100 new jobs. GM isn’t saying when the plant, which will supply batteries for Factory ZERO and Spring Hill Assembly in Tennessee, will open other than that it is expected to do so during the first quarter of 2022.
GM and LG Chem have invested $2.3 billion in the Ultium Cells LLC facility, which will be about the size of 30 football fields and manufacture battery cells for the GMC Hummer EV, Cadillac Lyriq, Cruise Origin and others, GM said.
At GM’s former Detroit-Hamtramck plant, now called Factory ZERO, GM said it will begin to recall workers early next year.
GM shut down the plant in February to invest $2.2 billion to retool it to make EVs. GM will build the GMC Hummer there starting next year. It will also manufacture the driverless Cruise Origin car and eventually several other yet-to-be-announced EVs.
“Factory ZERO is not hiring at this time,” said GM spokesman Dan Flores.
“Currently, we have 80 UAW-represented team members onsite helping with the renovations and construction.”
He told the Detroit Free Press that in early 2021, GM will begin to call back “small groups of our launch team, based on project needs.”
Also on Thursday, GM said the California Department of Motor Vehicles gave Cruise LLC the green light to test its autonomous vehicles without a safety driver on the streets of San Francisco.
Cruise is a self-driving car developer largely owned by GM, Honda Motor Co. and SoftBank.
The permit allows Cruise to test five driverless Chevrolet Bolt-based vehicles on certain streets.
Barra told analysts getting the permission in San Francisco is especially critical to GM’s ability to advance its self-driving business.
“If you think about ride-sharing today, the opportunity for profitability is in dense urban environments,” Barra said. “So having the opportunity to test it there is a pathway to faster commercialization and profitability.”