In March, we reported that GM and Hyundai were finalizing a deal to share electric commercial vans and pickup trucks. At the time, we reported that Hyundai was considering supplying General Motors with electric commercial vans that would replace the Chevy Express and GMC Savana and was exploring producing them in North America. In return, Hyundai would market GM’s midsize pickups, the Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon, under its own brands.
Industry analyst Sam Fiorani told Automotive News that GM’s “woefully underutilized” CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ontario would be a perfect location for Hyundai to build vans for GM. “If they need a place to build vans in North America, CAMI fits into that plan as having enough space and the ability to build electric vehicles.”
“[Hyundai and General Motors] are continuing discussions; nothing has been determined at this time,” Hyundai Canada spokesperson Brad Ross told Automotive News in an email.
Of course, this plan would only work if vans imported from the CAMI plant in Canada into the United States are protected by new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. Hyundai is in the process of increasing its U.S. production capacity with the HMG Metaplant America in Georgia, which produces the USDM Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 EVs. This sprawling new facility could be another potential manufacturing site for GM and Hyundai’s van collaboration.
“Absolutely. We have capacity. We have the workforce,” Unifor Local 88 chair Mike Van Boekel said of potentially building Hyundai vans at the CAMI plant. “So yeah, for sure. If they want to put vans in here, it would be a good place to put them.” However, Van Boekel isn’t aware of any plans to do so.
According to the Automotive News Data & Research Center, the CAMI Assembly Plant built about 3,500 Chevy BrightDrop electric commercial vans in 2024, and the same plant produced nearly 200,000 examples of the Chevy Equinox just five years earlier, giving credence to Fiorani’s claim that the plant is “woefully underutilized.”
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Industry analysts and the auto media need to get over this EV obsession. Now.
You need to get over your Obsession not the Media or the Auto Industry.
The absolute worst thing GM could do is replace the Express the an EV. They make so few Express vans now I’m converting GM customers to Transits and Promasters. And the electric Promasters and Transits just sit because no one wants them. For a business that is not in the city an electric vehicle is a death sentence. I even have a Solar Panel installation company that order 5 Silverado EV and one Ford Lightnin and less than 18 months later they own only ICE trucks.
The lead time from concept to release is longer for autos than movies. Hollywood is drowning and still has woke crap to release in the pipeline and are dealing with all the activists now in the industry. The auto industry’s time is coming if they don’t assist quickly. It’s a new world and they guessed wrong and plotted the wrong course.
Guess who has a large foot in both industries? Her initials are MB.
Show me on the puppet where EVs touched you.
They could also move Chevy Equinox production back to this plant, where it was made from it’s 2004 debut (as an early 2005 model) until 2022, when it was moved to Mexico and this clown show failure known as the BrightDrop.
GM’s “woefully underutilized” CAMI Assembly Plant….
And Orion, Factory Zero, Spring Hill, Fairfax, etc, etc….
Maybe all those US plants wouldn’t be underutilized if the UAW wasn’t always threatening strike.
Maybe if GM paid their workers better, and cut Mary’s bonus, the UAW wouldn’t threatened them.
This is what happens when you try to defy the laws of supply and demand.