GM St. Catharines Plant In Canada To Build Ultium Drive Motors

The GM St. Catharines Plant in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada will produce new GM Ultium drive motors, it was recently announced.

Per GM Canada, the new Ultium drive motor production will follow an investment in the St. Catharines Propusion facility and will support the automaker’s growing electric vehicle lineup. The investment, subject to support agreements with the federal and provincial governments, will support roughly 500 jobs at the plant. The plant currently employs roughly 1,100 workers.

The announcement was marked by a statement from Unifor National President Lana Payne. Unifor serves as the trade union representing workers at the St. Catharines facility.

“For more than 70 years, highly skilled autoworkers in St. Catharines have built among the most advanced powertrains anywhere in the world,” said Unifor National President Payne. “With a historic investment commitment from GM to build new electric drive units, autoworkers will continue to be the region’s economic backbone for generations to come.”

The new GM Ultium drive units will power GM’s BrightDrop electric delivery vans, which are produced at the GM Ingersoll / CAMI plant in Ontario, Canada. The new GM Ultium drive motor production at the St. Catharines plant will replace a portion of internal combustion engine production at the facility following retooling efforts.

At present, the GM St. Catharines plant produces V8 and V6 internal combustion engines, as well as transmissions. It’s expected that V8 engine production will continue in parallel to the new GM Ultium drive motor production for the foreseeable future.

This latest EV investment from GM follows retooling efforts at the GM CAMI plant in Ontario, which recently reopened as the first mass production EV assembly plant in Canada. Full-scale production of the all-electric BrightDrop Zevo 600 delivery van got underway in December of the 2022 calendar year.

Subscribe to GM Authority for more GM electric vehicle news, GM production news, GM business news, and around-the-clock GM news coverage.