General Motors has ended production of BrightDrop electric delivery vans at its CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario, bringing an end to the automaker’s commercial EV program. The company announced the news alongside its third-quarter earnings.
“The commercial electric van market has been developing much slower than expected and changes to the regulatory framework and fleet incentives have made the business even more challenging,” said CEO Mary Barra.
The move wasn’t unexpected. In May, GM paused production of the BrightDrop 400 and 600 models, and laid off 500 workers. The company said it planned to reopen the factory in July, but that didn’t happen. As InsideEVs reports, “BrightDrop vans have been piling up in lots on either side of the Canadian border for months.”
The end of federal EV incentives is hitting the commercial segment hard—buyers of commercial EVs could previously claim an incentive of up to $40,000 per vehicle. Pro-EV policies at the state level have also been rolled back.
However, governments have been alternately blowing hot and cold on electrification for decades, and one would think automakers might have learned to deal with this reality by now. Some experienced GM-watchers see the reversal as part of a pattern of inconsistency and indecisiveness that dates back to the days of the EV1. “Standard procedure from GM. Come up with a good idea, invest in it and then drop it like a rock before it can get going,” commented one of Electrek’s readers.
GM invested plenty to retool CAMI as a “full-scale EV manufacturing plant,”—and so did Canadian taxpayers, to the tune of $500 million. Now the company has abandoned it less than 36 months after the first electric van rolled off the line.
Urban delivery vans are an excellent use case for EVs, and everyone who doesn’t have gasoline running in their veins expects the market to grow. Rivian sold 6,809 of its electric vans through Q3, and Ford sold 4,174 units of its E-Transit in the first half of the year.
Electrek reports that BrightDrop was on track to sell around 4,000 units this year.
The Unifor auto union, which represents the 1,200 workers expected to be laid off in Ontario, is also displeased with the decision, which it blamed on the “dangerous and destabilizing auto policies” of the current US administration.
As automakers always do when they announce the cancellation of EV programs, Ms. Barra insisted that GM remains committed to electrification, adding that the end of BrightDrop is part of a strategy to “right-size” the company’s EV strategy.
As Motor Trend reports, “Barra thinks the market will shake out as competitors who were selling EVs at discount for regulatory compliance will be weeded out.”
Some of us fear that GM itself will be one of those weeded out—or perhaps confined to a small patch of weeds in the global garden—as low-priced Chinese EVs complete their conquest of non-US markets around the world.
Barra and her team, however, are betting that the market for ICE vehicles in the US will continue to grow. GM announced net income of $1.3 billion for the quarter, notwithstanding a write-off of $1.6 billion for the company’s mounting EV-related missteps. The company raised its guidance for the year and now expects adjusted earnings of $12-13 billion.
Sources: GM Authority, InsideEVs, Electrek, Motor Trend, EVMechanica
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