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GM has struggled to sell electric commercial vehicles with USCAMI assembly and took two weeks of previously planned downtime to adjust production schedules and balance InventorbeBa before incentives.
General Motors is fighting over the slow selling Brightdrop delivery vans, representing another flawed projection of EV sales, leaving hundreds of vehicles parked on either side of the US-Canada border, the Detroit Free Press learned.
Ingersoll, Ontario, has reopened plants that produce all-electric vans after a two-week shutdown related to inventory. GM also reportedly offers tens of thousands of dollars rebates on its largest model.
A struggle arises less than a year to improve its performance as GM folds a commercial van to the Chevrolet brand and GM tries to play against competitors, including Ford and Libian, in the electric van space.
Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research at Telemetry Insights, said Brightdrop Vans’ expansion range is far outweighing its market competitors, but so is price. Before the incentive, the vehicle cost around $74,000. For example, Ford’s electronic transport van with extended battery range is $51,600 (over $20,000 cheaper), even before the incentive applies.
“There’s a market for electric vans,” Abuel el Amid said. “It’s not in that price range.”
Last week, hundreds of vehicles lined up in Michigan storage lots were taken by a free photographer last week. Reuters released similar photos from the Cami assembly plant in Ontario.
This is due to low demand as GM struggles to sell electric commercial vehicles in the US.
Chevrolet, the brand that Brightdrop is currently on sale in the US, reportedly offers a rebate that offers a 40% discount on larger vans.
GM produces BrightDrop vehicles at Canada’s first full-scale all-electric vehicle manufacturing plant.
Heavy rebates were offered this year
A GM spokesperson said in a statement that it was closed during the scheduled two-week shutdown to become a “production schedule and balance inventory.” The production rebooted last week.
A representative from Unifor Local 88 said Flint’s Brightdrop vehicles are always scheduled for the US market and have nothing to do with President Donald Trump’s tariff threat. Their rapid appearance is due to refining cross-border transport to include rail shipping. If the vehicle remains in Flint, one union official said it was because the dealer had not purchased them.
Brightdrop’s sales are far below its immediate competitors. GM sold 1,529 Brightdrop Commercial Electric Vans in the US last year, compared to Ford’s 12,610 electronic transport vehicles and Rivian’s 13,243 EDV. However, Brightdrop sells Mercedes-Benz, which last year sold only 828 Esprinter vans in the US.
Brightdrop incentives in 2025 skyrocketed on February 24, according to a breaking news report that Carsdirect was sent to dealers. Until June 30th, the Brightdrop 400 and Brightdrop 600 will be available nationwide with a $25,500 purchase rebate as part of the 2025 Brightdrop Consumer Cash Program.
“Based on the analysis, these savings appear to be stacked and bringing up to $31,000 in potential savings,” Carsdirect reported.
General Motors said in a statement that it is committed to the success of Chevrolet Brightdrop. “And we remain optimistic about its future,” he said.
“Customers continue to add Brightdrop products to their fleet thanks to their best-in-class availability and a complete suite of driver safety solutions,” the statement said.
The company hired a new vice president this week to oversee GM Envolve, its fleet and commercial business software platform. Ian Hacker, who was previously with GM, was recently the chief commercial officer of Hyundai Capital Europe.
Since consolidating Brightdrop under the name Shevrolet, GM has over 340 dealers selling commercial vans from seven Brightdrop-specific dealers. Chevrolet Brightdrop has over 250 unique commercial customers, the spokesman said, “We continue to acquire new things on a regular basis.”
Long distance means a big expense
The great range of Brightdrops is what pushes prices over other prices. The Ford vehicle is about 140 miles on a fully charged charge, while the Libian vehicle is slightly higher. The Bright Drop Van is nearly double the distance at 272 miles with a maximum range battery pack and all-wheel drive.
However, industry experts say it’s not tempted enough for buyers to forget about the additional costs. Ford CEO Jim Farley last month showed Wall Street that retail customers would not pay premiums for larger EVs, making it a “very tough business case given the cost of the battery.”
Without naming the name, Farley said some of Ford’s competitors continue to bring expensive EVs to the “doing wrong” market.
Cost concerns may seem unwise to strike fleet customers than traditional retail customers and paying more for larger batteries as work and delivery vans tend to travel less than 70 miles a day, Abuelsamid said. Approximately 60% of Ford’s fleet customers said they could return to their corporate lots and garages at night and charge them for the next day’s operation.
Creating a van that can be configured to meet the needs of a variety of customers is another driver of Ford’s success. For example, e-transit “has more configurations than all other electric commercial vans from the full-line automaker, offering two lengths, three roof heights, three body styles and cargo volumes of up to 487 cubic feet,” according to the company’s website.
GM launched Brightdrop in 2021 as a fully owned subsidiary in the hopes of its revenues exceeding $203 billion by 2030, with a low profit margin. Brightdrop has two commercially electric delivery vehicles: the Zevo 600, which resembles a UPS-style truck, and the Zevo 600, which resembles a smaller EV410 medium truck.
According to Sam Fiorani, Vice President of Global Vehicle Forecasting for Automotive Forecast Solutions, the automaker has invested $800 million to build a VANS to convert CAMI assembly into an EV factory. Adding Shevrolet to the Brightdrop name does not improve sales.
“Brightdrop needs to establish itself as a brand and source for these products. This is a whole new network where Chevrolet needs to be built where there is established and knows the market,” Fiorani says.
Using electric vehicles for stopping is practical and will result in significant cost savings from gasoline vehicles. Brightdrop’s EVS saves between $10,000 and $12,000 per vehicle each year, the company said.
Brightdrop CEO Travis Katz said in 2022 that the company expects to produce 50,000 trucks a year starting in 2025, bringing “many revenue.”
Katz left the company in late 2023 without specifying why GM reorganized Brightdrop to stop working independently and began cutting costs.
“GM was on the path they laid out for the market that companies expected to get into electric vehicles a lot. They are ahead of the curve at this point, and sales have not met there. GM executives are expecting a Brightdrop sale of 70,000 or 80,000. Fioni said. “This is a much more practical number for this type of vehicle than the sales seen by the Express.”
Kami’s future
It is unclear what the low sales of Brightdrop in the US mean for Cami’s future. This is a complicated question due to the possibility of loss of US tax incentives and the possibility of tariffs adding additional costs to these vehicles, Abuelsamid said.
If Trump successfully reversed the aspects of the inflation reduction laws that President Joe Biden signed into law on August 16, 2022, offering up to $7,500 in federal incentives for EVs through 2032, the cost of not only fleets but all EVs will increase, making imports of these types of vehicles more attractive.
Meanwhile, Ingersoll community members have expressed concern about job stability in the current landscape, with 1,300 employees at the factory making up a significant portion of the area’s approximately 11,000 residents.
“Cami is the town’s largest employer, with thousands of spinoff jobs across the region attached to the future,” read the London Free Press report ahead of the planned shutdown. The paper also reported that auto parts and auto parts plants could be closed if they could close within a week of US tariffs.
Still, General Motors has deep ties with Canada, dating back almost to a century and never travels abroad. Dimitry Anastakis, chairman of LR Wilson and RJ Curry in Canadian Business History at the University of Toronto, said it was insane to leave the major investments GM made in the country to start with Scratch Stateside.
“There was a sense in the industry, and on Wall Street (Trump) wouldn’t do this,” Anastakis said. “A sane individual like this won’t overthrow his industry. The uncertainty he is causing will not affect Canada, but it’s not the way he wants.
Are you moving to Michigan?
GM CFO Paul Jacobson suggested that the company’s playbook for managing tariffs could involve revenue calls and other recent releases to bring production back to the US.
“If there’s tariffs in either Canada or Mexico, there’s a play that can be done in that respect to minimize the impact,” Jacobson said. “We have a plan and have some levers that we can pull.”
These plans were not intended to move forward until permanent levels of tariffs seemed inevitable, he said.
In total, the Ingersoll-based company in 2022 exported about $2.1 billion worth of goods. About $1.4 billion comes from automobiles, food processing, defense, packaging and other advanced manufacturing, according to labor market analytics firm Lightcast.
It’s expensive and time-consuming to go back the plant for EV production, but it’s not as if GM had no other options. In Michigan, it’s less than that.
“They could probably build these with zeros in the factory,” Abuel el umid said.
Free Press staff writer Jamie LaRow contributed to this report.
Jackie Charniga covers General Motors for the Free Press. Contact her at jcharniga@freepress.com.
