General Motors is extending downtime at several North American assembly plants for maintenance and product changeovers.
The automaker on Tuesday said all of its plants will be down the week of Dec. 25 for the contractual holiday break. Fort Wayne Assembly in Indiana, Factory Zero in Detroit, Spring Hill Manufacturing in Tennessee and Oshawa Assembly in Ontario, Canada, will stay off-line the following week for maintenance, a GM spokesperson said. All four plants are expected to resume production Jan. 8.
GM’s Lansing Grand River assembly plant in Michigan will be down the week of Jan. 2 in conjunction with the end of the sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro sports car. Chevy has said there is no immediate plan to replace the Camaro, which launched as a 2016 model, but that “this is not the end of Camaro’s story.” The Lansing plant will resume production Jan. 8, GM said.
Orion Assembly, north of Detroit, will remain idled for more than a year after it stops building the Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV next week. The plant will then be retooled for electric pickups, but GM has pushed back the start of truck production at Orion until 2025.
The Bolts are built on GM’s older battery architecture, and will be redesigned onto its Ultium electric vehicle platform in 2025, CEO Mary Barra said this month.
GM said its Wentzville Assembly plant in Missouri, which builds the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon midsize pickups, will be down the week of Dec. 18 because of a parts shortage. The automaker declined to reveal which part is affected but said the plant was expected to resume production Jan. 2.
The CAMI plant in Canada has been idled since October because of a battery module supply constraint. It’s expected to restart production of electric commercial vans for GM’s BrightDrop business in the spring.