General Motors’ Toledo Propulsions Systems Plant in Ohio will start manufacturing electric vehicle drive units nine months later than initially planned, a United Auto Workers union representative told local newspaper The Blade.
The factory’s EV-related assembly lines were supposed to go online in the first quarter of 2024, but the production launch has been delayed to Q4 2024.
GM’s Toledo facility builds several transmissions for front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive internal combustion cars wearing the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac nameplates. The plant’s six-speed transmission production line was shut down in April to make room for the EV drive line after an announced investment of $760 million.
According to GM, roughly 1,600 people work at the Toledo facility. The delay affects roughly 75 temporary employees who are still on layoff from when the ICE transmission line went offline in the spring.
The electric drive units that will be manufactured at GM’s Ohio factory will make their way into the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, and GMC Hummer EV. That said, the production of the Silverado EV and Sierra EV has already been postponed at GM’s Orion Assembly in Michigan until 2025, while the Factory Zero facility in Detroit is slowly ramping up production of the GMC Hummer EV and the Chevrolet Silverado EV.
We reached out to GM to find out if the delay at the Toledo plant will further affect the manufacturing efforts for what may well be two of the company’s most important products.
From a quality perspective, UAW Local 14 President Tony Totty, who represents the workers at GM’s Toledo plant, told the newspaper the postponement is welcome. “We pride ourselves on having great launches and the extra time always allows for the best launch possible,” he said, according to The Blade. The union leader added that the original schedule to launch the EV drive line in the first quarter of next year was aggressive by retooling standards and that the delay gives management and workers more time to prepare for what will be a crucial product in GM’s EV product lineup.
Currently, the EV drive line is being built by contractors, with a small group of hourly employees preparing for the production launch, Totty said.
The transition to an EV-rich portfolio has been a bumpy ride for General Motors. With at least 10 new electric models in the pipeline, the American automaker has encountered battery manufacturing delays, vehicle manufacturing delays, and now component manufacturing delays. After pouring billions of dollars into retooling factories and vehicle development, it had several months where zero new electric cars were built. However, things are improving.
In the first nine months of 2023, GM sold 56,414 EVs in the United States, which accounted for 2.9% of its entire sales volume. Granted, Almost 50,000 of those EVs were the soon-to-be-discontinued non-Ultium Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV, but it’s still better than nothing.
