A blast occurred at the GM Factory Zero plant in Hamtramck, Michigan on Thanksgiving afternoon when a “cylinder” of unspecified type exploded, the second explosion in as many days at a General Motors facility.
The explosion injured a single worker, Click on Detroit and other sources report, with a GM statement informing the public that the individual was “transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.”
The Detroit Fire Department was on the scene soon after the explosion, but reported that the blast did not set anything ablaze at the facility. The hazmat team also checked out the situation and gave the all-clear. While Factory Zero is the first fully dedicated EV assembly plant operated by GM, the Fire Department confirmed that no EV batteries were involved in the explosion.
In response to the event, GM said that “safety is our overriding priority and we will continue to investigate the cause of the incident.” Factory Zero has been subject to a series of fires over the past several years, with eight incidents involving the fire department coming to the facility between summer 2023 and spring 2024, though some of these were medical emergencies rather than fires.
GM is working to improve safety at the factory, which assembles battery modules for EVs on-site – a process that can produce significant sparking. The automaker has at least considered training its own fire response team for the site to help cut down on the number of incidents. One of the most serious was a three-alarm fire in December 2023 that brought 88 firefighters and 22 trucks to the scene.
The explosion occurred on day after another blast damaged two houses near the Milford Proving Ground on Wednesday. The earlier explosion, however, had nothing to do with The General other than location. It occurred when a tank of oil and brine blew up at a third party drilling operation. The drilling company leases some acreage at the Proving Ground site for natural gas and oil extraction.
Factory Zero produces a range of General Motors EVs, including the GMC Hummer EV SUV, the GMC Hummer EV Pickup, the Chevy Silverado EV, the GMC Sierra EV and the Cadillac Escalade IQ.
Comments
Fires related to battery precursors is still a battery fire 🙄. Says something if they have this many fires and just at this site, not others. Granted DOW and Arkema has small fires all the time with unstable organic peroxides, but they know how to handle them and have mutiple levels of safety.
Drill baby drill
Hopefully these fine EV’s will sit on the dealer rot and become monuments to laugh at.
Our company insurance goes up a lot if an employee gets something in his eye that requires medical treatment. Our ability to bid jobs goes down too as that is part of a overall safety score. I speculate an explosion on site would raise insurance prices too, and trigger an OSHA investigation.