General Motors is hitting the brakes on production at its CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, after slower-than-expected demand for its BrightDrop electric delivery vans has left the company with mounting inventory.
Beginning today, April 14, approximately 1,200 workers represented by Unifor Local 88 will be temporarily laid off, with limited production expected to resume briefly in May. However, the facility will then shut down completely until October 2025. When operations restart, the plant will shift to a single production shift — a move expected to result in the indefinite layoff of nearly 500 employees.
GM says the pause is not related to newly introduced U.S. tariffs but is instead aimed at “rebalancing inventory and aligning production with market demand.” The company remains committed to the BrightDrop brand and the CAMI facility, stating that it will use the downtime to retool the plant for the 2026 model year of the BrightDrop lineup.
Launched in 2021 as a standalone EV subsidiary, BrightDrop was touted as a cornerstone of GM’s electrification strategy, aiming to deliver 50,000 electric vans annually by 2025. But reality has fallen short of expectations. In 2024, GM sold just 1,529 BrightDrop vans, greatly outnumbered by their direct competition – Ford sold 12,610 E-Transit while Rivian has sold 13,243 of their EDVs in the same time period.
So far in 2025, only 274 units have been sold — a modest increase from 256 a year earlier, but far below the threshold needed to sustain multi-shift operations at CAMI.
Price appears to be the key hurdle. The BrightDrop van costs around US$74,000 before incentives, while Ford’s E-Transit starts at just over US$51,000. GM’s sales strategy is adding to the problem, with the automaker primarily targeting large commercial fleet buyers, bypassing smaller businesses that might be interested in EV delivery solutions but lack the purchasing power or confidence to invest in unproven technology.
CAMI was Canada’s first full-scale EV factory, relaunched in 2022 with significant investment from federal and provincial governments. But with a glut of unsold vans piling up in Ontario and Michigan, questions loom about the viability of GM’s EV commercial vehicle strategy.
This is not the first time the plant has been idled. It was forced to shut down in 2023 due to a battery shortage.
