In a move that is described as “a little bit of a bummer” by local commissioner Kim Urbanowski, the GM Lake Orion plant in Michigan appears to be scaling back the planned number of employees even as construction on the site moves ahead with a revised plan.
Orion Township gave The General the green light for its revised plan, which will see 40 percent fewer parking spaces at the site than originally planned, Crain’s Detroit Business reports.
Back when GM first rolled out its scheme in 2022 for an expansion to the Lake Orion plant in preparation for EV production, the automaker claimed the site would keep 1,000 existing jobs and add a robust 2,300 additional employees to the payroll once revamped. Now, after delays to production of the Chevy Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV at Lake Orion, the models are due to start rolling off the assembly line in late 2025.
The changes in parking lot size appear unrelated to EV demand, unlike similar changes by Ford, which is slashing funding for development of its Marshall, Michigan battery plant by about a third. GM seems to be planning a similarly sized factory to its original plans, but one that will now require significantly fewer workers to operate it.
John Maynard, project director at Wade Trim – the engineering company overseeing the renovation of the Orion plant – says “we figured out that we could have slightly less employees” as a result of “the assembly line and the processes that they’re going to use.”
Michigan municipal and state officials have doled out billions in incentives to attract EV investment and jobs, meaning the latest wrinkle in Lake Orion development is not entirely to their liking. The aforementioned commissioner Kim Urbanowski said that “because we’re now finding out that machinery is going to be able to eliminate the need for employees, I just really kind of need to say that part of the reason we were excited to have GM come here is they were bringing jobs.”
GM says employee numbers at the plant will not be affected despite the drastic cut in available parking and Maynard’s remarks. However, the company’s CEO Mary Barra also stated that General Motors will “implement engineering efficiency and other improvements that will make our vehicles less expensive to produce, and more profitable.”
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