As GM Authority has been following for quite some time now, construction of the Ultium Cells Spring Hill plant in Tennessee was on track to begin operations by the end of the 2023 calendar year. Now, it appears as though the facility will be opening a few weeks later than originally anticipated.
As General Motors outlined in its Q3 2023 earnings presentation, the Ultium Cells Spring Hill plant will open sometime early 2024 due to construction delays.
For background, the Ultium Cells Warren plant has been churning out Ultium battery cells since September 2022, while the steel structure of the Ultium Cells Lansing plant was finished in March 2023.
In other Ultium Cells Spring Hill news, the facility recently announced that it will bump up the starting wages for several positions. More specifically, Production Operators and Quality Inspectors will start at $20 per hour, while Crew Leads will see $22 per hour. Process Maintenance Technicians have increased to $27 – $35 per hour while Facility Maintenance Technicians can make $29 – $36 per hour, of which the exact figures will be based on the level of experience.
An additional piece worth noting is that the plant is looking to add another 300 employees in the next few months. In fact, by the end of the 2023 calendar year, the Ultium Cells plant will be responsible for the employment of 1,700 workers.
Another recent development revolves around the ongoing contract negotiations between the Detroit Three automakers and the UAW union. After calls from across the U.S. for General Motors to fold Ultium Cells workers into UAW contracts – including from an Ohio Senator, the Detroit-based automaker finally agreed to allow the Ultium battery plants to be included in the national UAW labor agreement, thus marking a significant victory for the union in contract negotiations with The General.
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Comments
No need to hurry, there’s not much demand right now.
My dog lives his life in the present. No worries about the future. I am glad that GM doesn’t think like him and looks into offering their customers the choice to pick between ICE and EV. In the meantime statements like “americans don’t want EV’s” or other similar postings are only showing the ignorance of the people too scared to embrace change or too lazy to educate themselves on history, market trends and politics, to name just a few.
More likely, people who live away fro urban area, prefer ICE, and don’t appreciate the new technology being rammed down their throats.
Really,have you considered the weak electric grid,little to none charging stations across the country,the cost of home chargers,the cost of a replacement battery and the fact the batteries are not recyclable.So before calling people names state the facts before you post a negative post. I for one would never buy an ev and that’s my choice and doesn’t make me ignorant either!!!
State the facts. Ok.
I work in the energy industry. EVs are making them salivate at how much more energy they’ll be selling.
I own an EV and my home charger is the dryer outlet in my garage and a $250 L2 charging cable I bought off Amazon.
I bought my EV used w 82k miles. At 105kiles it still only had 8% range loss. Modern EVs battery packs have a life expectancy of over 300k miles. I’ll likely have traded it in for scrap before the battery needs replaced.
But when it is salvaged, theres an entire industry for recycling lithium batteries, especially EV battery packs that have >$10k worth of raw battery materials. Google Redwood Materials. Fun fact, because EVs are still just getting started and battery packs last so long, almost all the packs made are still in EVs on the road. So the EV battery recycling industry really can’t get into full gear until all the EVs from the past decade start aging out in another decade or so.
You’re free to make whatever vehicle choice you want. Nobody forced you to buy a gas car, nobody is forcing you to buy an EV. But before you start making negative posts, you might want to go check YOUR facts. Ignorance isnt lack of knowledge, it’s a refusal to learn and change your opinions based on new knowledge. Learn all you can and make an informed decision, not just the one that agrees with an opinion you already have.
I was wondering where GM was going to get the Ultium cells for the comeback tour of the Bolt. They were going to need all this production and then some for all the model lines they’d already announced.
In the past two weeks theyve announced they’re pushing back their EV truck launches a year, and they’ll be buying LFP batteries for the new Bolt model.
Which leaves me wondering…
Either they wised up and realized launching a dozen EVs that they only have enough batteries to make 50k units per model of was a bad idea..
Or “there’s not enough demand” and now they have all this idle capacity they’ve just built sitting here being unprofitable.
Which is weird, cause even though Tesla “missed” Q3, they still sold everything they producedand are expanding peoduction to include launching the CT next month.
So maybe the problem isnt that there’s not much demand for EVs. Maybe the problem is lack of commitment from GM to execute on plans theyve already paid for.
Maybe waiting to finalize the UAW contract. GM might be better off selling the factory to someone else and just buying the batteries from them.
From whom? Part of the reason everyone is building battery factories is because none existed five years ago. When Tesla built GF Nevada, it literally doubled global lithium battery production. They needed that factory because there wasnt enough battery production in the world to supply producing just the few 100k EVs they were making then.
GM is in the same spot now – they’ll need a half dozen battery factories to go all in on EVs
Don’t forget the crazy Trudeau government initiative in Canada where the Liberals want to screw with electricity rates. Rates could quadruple in 2 years if they have their way. Not a lot of people will be running to buy EV’s at a $1.00 KW/H.
Well said sir!