GM suspends electric vehicle production at Canadian plant because it promises to make more
General Motors has halted production at a plant in Ontario, Canada, due to a battery shortage, according to local London Free Press.
The CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, builds BrightDrop electric trucks, but was closed for a month due to a reported battery shortage. A union representative told the London Free Press that the factory had orders for four years, but high demand for GM’s Ultium battery hardware was forced to close. The factory is scheduled to reopen on July 31.
GM plans four battery plants in its Ultium Cells LLC joint venture with LG, but currently only one in Ohio is operating. And a recent fire may have slowed production there, the report noted.
BrightDrop EV600
However, it can be more than just a short battery supply for a factory. The Detroit free press recently reported that EV production at GM’s Zero Plant, located on the border of Detroit and the suburb of Hamtramck, has slowed to near-stop. In the first half of the year, GM delivered just 49 GMC Hummer EV pickup trucks — down from 371 in the first half of 2022 — and 2,316 Cadillac Lyriq SUVs, Free Press reported.
GM announced it will accelerate sales in the second quarter of 2023, with deliveries up 19% year-over-year, but that’s mainly due to increased sales of internal combustion vehicles. And while GM claims to have sold 15,652 EVs, most of them (13,900) are going to stop working Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV, sales increased 101% year-over-year as production and deliveries were fully restored following the recall of dead batteries.
2022 GMC Hummer EV pre-production at Factory Zero in Detroit, Michigan
GM originally planned to produce 400,000 electric vehicles by the end of 2023. Now it is delay that goal mid-2024. But with these poor numbers for the Ultium EV, even that now seems too long.
GM CEO Marry Barra emphasized earlier this year that the company is Flexible on battery cellsHowever, and shortly after that statement, GM signed a 3 billion USD joint venture with Samsung to replenish its supply with cells in an alternative cylindrical format. So the company could be disqualified if the Ultium technology fails to scale as expected.
