GENERAL MOTORS GEARS UP TO DROP $2.5 BILLION ON A THIRD EV BATTERY FACTORY

General Motors’ massive commitment to battery electric vehicles (GMC Hummer EV, Chevy Silverado EV, and GMC Sierra EV to name a few) could bring a huge influx of capital and jobs to the area of Lansing, Michigan, as the automaker is prepared to spend a cool $2.5 billion on a new EV battery production facility there.

As The Detroit News reports, the Lansing City Council on Monday advanced a proposal to grant a “renaissance zone,” which would exempt the factory site from city taxes for 18 years, to the project. In return, GM and battery partner LG Energy Solution say, the factory would directly create as many as 1,700 new jobs in the area when fully operational.

General Motors is going to need a lot of EV battery cells to meet its ambitious electric vehicle goals, which include selling more than one million BEVs between 30 new global models by 2025. So far, the automaker has selected Lordstown, Ohio and Spring Hill, Tennessee as sites for EV battery cell factories, and there’s a fourth battery factory location expected to be revealed in the coming months.

Just this week, GM teased its latest addition to the Ultium cell-powered BEV family: an electric GMC Sierra Denali pickup truck. The truck will join an increasingly crowded field of battery-electric pickups filled by the likes of Ford, Tesla, Rivian, and Lordstown Motors. It will be GMC’s third pure-electric model, after the GMC Hummer EV and GMC Hummer SUV, and is expected to arrive on the market some time in 2023 as a 2024 model, alongside a battery-powered version of the Chevrolet Silverado.

After Monday’s Lansing City Council vote to grant the GM battery factory a renaissance zone, on Tuesday, state lawmakers approved a $1.48-billion economic development plan aimed at securing the battery plant and three other large capital investments in Michigan. The move comes just after the state lost out on two potentially large investments from GM’s crosstown rival Ford Motor Company, which instead opted to build two new, multi-billion-dollar factories in Kentucky and Tennessee.