Aaron Brzozowski 
General Motors is betting big on battery-electric vehicles and the state of Michigan, announcing a whopping $7 billion round of investments – the single largest investment announcement in the company’s history – primarily to upgrade its Orion Assembly Plant for Silverado EV and electric GMC Sierra production and erect a brand new battery cell factory in Lansing. It’s a big deal, and it’s a key part of the automaker’s goal to be able to build one million EVs per year by the end of 2025.
To put that figure into context, GM built and sold a total of 22,073 Chevrolet Bolt EVs through all of 2021. One million is more than 45 times that number, and the company wants to achieve this in less than four years. It’s also more electric vehicles than Tesla delivered globally last year, and remember: EVs are all that Tesla does.
How Does GM Plan On Achieving This?
The foundation of GM’s EV strategy is the same as what underpins its overall success in the US market: trucks. By the time the automaker’s new Ultium Cells EV battery plant in Lansing is fully ramped up and Orion Assembly and Factory ZERO are both humming along, GM will have an annual pure-electric truck production capacity of 600,000 units. That will be spread between the GMC Hummer EV and Hummer EV SUV, the just-revealed Chevrolet Silverado EV, and the forthcoming electric GMC Sierra at the least. The figure might also include a pure-electric version of the Cadillac Escalade, which is expected to enter production in early 2024.
Regardless, it’s clear that GM is making a serious play to claim what it can of the US electric vehicle market over the next few years. In all, the automaker plans to invest a total of $35 billion into electric and autonomous vehicles from 2020 through 2025, and bring out a slew of new models in the process. Beside the GMC Hummer EV and Hummer EV SUV, the Silverado EV, an electric Sierra, and an electric Escalade, GM is also fixing to offer the Cadillac Lyriq crossover, hand-built Cadillac Celestiq sedan, and a whole range of additional crossover models from Buick, Cadillac, and Chevrolet.
