General Motors announced plans earlier this week to invest roughly $4 billion into its U.S. manufacturing operations over the next two years. The new investment will support the production of both ICE-powered vehicles and EVs. GM aims to leverage the new investment to produce more than two million vehicles annually while adapting key facilities for long-term flexibility.
The $4 billion investment will be allocated to three GM production facilities, including Orion Assembly in Michigan, Fairfax Assembly in Kansas, and Spring Hill Manufacturing in Tennessee.
Orion Assembly was originally expected to produce the Chevy Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV but will now pivot to building full-size SUVs and gas-powered variants of the Chevy Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra 1500 pickups starting in early 2027. Meanwhile, production of all BT1-based vehicles, including the Silverado EV, Sierra EV, Cadillac Escalade IQL, Cadillac Escalade IQ, and GMC Hummer EV will remain at Factory Zero plant in Detroit.
This raises the question: Will the full-size trucks and SUVs built at the Orion facility exclusively use conventional ICE powertrains, or are hybrids possible? General Motors said it would add PHEVs to its lineup in a couple of years, and we’re expecting full-size trucks to get the technology to compete against Ford, Toyota, and Ram.
GM’s Fort Wayne and Arlington plants are humming along at or near full capacity building the current generation of GM’s full-size trucks and SUVs. Adding HEV/PHEV systems to those assembly lines could potentially slow down the process. Instead of sacrificing production speed at these plants in Indiana and Texas, could General Motors be planning on producing hybrid pickups and SUVs at Orion?
GM was planning on retooling the Orion facility for EV production, anyway, so it’s not farfetched to think they’re revising that plan for hybrids instead. Depending on the volume of hybrids General Motors is expecting, Orion could even exclusively become the production site of hybrid trucks and SUVs while assembly for the full-size models powered by traditional ICE powertrains continues at Fort Wayne and Arlington.
Of course, this is all speculative. But putting the pieces together of GM promising PHEVs in the U.S. by 2027, this new round of investment going through 2027, and the likelihood of hybrid full-size trucks and SUVs makes the Orion facility seem like the perfect place to build them.
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