General Motors is struggling to sell its commercial electric vans, and hundreds are now piling up in storage lots on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.
When GM launched its BrightDrop electric commercial vans in 2021, the company expected revenues to top $10 billion by 2030, and the company invested $800 million to convert its CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario to produce the EVs, the Detroit Free Press reports.
Four years later, GM was forced to shut down the Ontario plant for two weeks this month as it contends with a glut of inventory, with images from the Free Press and Reuters showing hundreds stored in rows at lots in Flint and GM’s Ontario plant.
The factory reopened on Monday as GM offers discounts up to $31,000 off its BrightDrop vans, which cost as much as $20,000 more than competitors at roughly $74,000.
“There is a market for electric vans,” Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research for Telemetry Insights, told the Free Press. “Just not at that price point.”
Amid the lagging sales, GM has also consolidated BrightDrop under its Chevrolet banner to expand availability to 340 dealers.
GM said in a statement officials “remain optimistic” about the future of the new Chevrolet BrightDrop EVs, despite selling just 1,529 vans in 2024, significantly less than the 12,610 EV vans sold by Ford and 13,243 by Rivian.
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“Customers continue to add BrightDrop products to their fleet thanks to its best-in-class available range and complete suite of driver safety solutions,” the statement read.
GM efforts to boost sales of its BrightDrop vans follows numerous other struggles in the EV industry despite hundreds of millions in taxpayer funded incentives from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration.
The Wayne County Airport Authority has banned motorists from parking certain Chevrolet Bolt electric cars at the Detroit Metro Airport over concerns they could catch on fire.
Matt Morawski, director of communications for the authority, told Michigan Capitol Confidential the policy is designed to prevent fires from Bolts that have not received recommended repairs outlined in a recall notice from General Motors.
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GM has issued at least three recalls for the Bolt since 2021 over issues with its batteries catching on fire.
In December, GM announced it is backing out of its joint venture with LG Energy Solution to construct an Ultium Cells battery plant near Lansing, leaving LG to fulfill a promise to create 1,360 jobs.
GM negotiated $120 million in taxpayer funded incentives with the Whitmer administration as part of the deal, and doesn’t plan to return those funds.
The funding was part of a broader business incentive package, the largest in Michigan’s history at $666 million when it was inked in 2022, that also included $480 million for GM to retool its Orion Township assembly plant to produce all-electric pickups.
While the state has paid out the entire grant, GM has postponed plans at its Orion Township plan by at least a year amid lower-than-anticipated EV sales.
The decision to ditch Ultium Cells followed just one month after GM laid off 1,000 employees, including 507 salaried and hourly employees at its Global Technology Center in Warren for the same reason.
GM and other EV producers in the U.S. are now revising production plans as President Donald Trump moves to eliminate his predecessor’s EV mandate and threatens tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
The former could result in less focus on producing EVs, while the latter could move what’s left to Michigan.
“In a world where compliance is eased, you could see where you don’t necessarily need as much plug-in, you might not need as much (battery electric vehicles) as well,” GM CFO Paul Jacobson told UBS Global Industrials and Transportation Conference in Florida last year.
In more recent earnings calls and public appearances, Jacobson has made it clear moving production back into the U.S. is one of several options the company is looking into as tariff talks continue, according to the Free Press.
“There’s plays that we can do on that perspective to minimize the impact if there are tariffs either on Canada or Mexico,” Jacobson said. “We’re doing the planning and have several levers that we can pull.”