General Motors laid out plans for its next major investment, including three U.S. factories.
GM’s electric vehicle range has evolved by leaps and bounds since the Chevy Bolt first hit the scene back in 2017. The automaker decided to drop the updated Bolt hatchback (and its EUV crossover variant) after the 2022 model year, with plans to introduce a next-gen model down the line. The plan has shifted a bit over the past couple years, but General Motors announced it is preparing the next-gen Bolt to launch later this year, as a 2027 model. The plant building the new model is part of the company’s latest $4 billion investment announcement — money which it intends to pump into three manufacturing facilities over the next two years to bolster its U.S. manufacturing portfolio.
Instead of building the next Bolt at Orion Assembly in Michigan where it built the old one, GM plans to build it at its Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City instead. As well as the next-gen Bolt, the automaker announced this week it would build its as-yet-unnamed “next-gen affordable EV” at the plant, as well as the gas-powered Chevy Equinox.
We still don’t have a ton of information about the 2027 Chevy Bolt just yet. That said, there’s a good chance it will be an evolution of the old hatchback or small crossover, in the EUV’s case, as Chevrolet still has room in its lineup to position a small electric car below the Equinox EV and Blazer EV. Whether it will continue to be a front-wheel drive-only EV or evolve into an all-wheel drive model alongside its SUV siblings is a question mark, but it will undoubtedly ride on GM’s BEV3 platform.
With the inclusion of GM’s “affordable EV” on the upcoming list, it’s also unclear exactly where that EV will live on the price spectrum, as a new Bolt would most likely need to be cheaper than the Equinox EV (and indeed, the old Bolt) to be a competitive option.
While Orion Assembly won’t build the new Bolt, it is still a beneficiary of this $4 billion investment plant. Instead of electric cars, though, it will build the company’s profitable full-size SUVs and trucks like the Chevy Silverado/GMC Sierra 1500 and the Chevy Tahoe/Suburban, among its GMC and Cadillac-branded brethren. Production at that facility will begin in early 2027.
The third plant is Spring Hill, Tennessee, which currently builds the Cadillac Lyriq as well as the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX, the Cadillac Vistiq and (at least for now) the Cadillac XT5. GM dropped a bit of a surprise with this part of the announcement, in confirming that it would build a next-generation, gas-powered Chevy Blazer at this plant, after announcing the current model would retire after the 2025 model year.
In the same statement, GM said its ‘Factory Zero’ plant in Hamtramck, Michigan will be the dedicated production facility for the Chevy Silverado EV and the GMC Sierra EV, as well as the Hummer EV and the Cadillac Escalade IQ.
All these moves bring a significant investment back into the U.S., which will hopefully spur thousands of manufacturing jobs. The company’s decision to ramp up truck production, for instance, comes as part of its full-size truck output is based in Silao, Mexico. Similarly, the old Chevy Blazer was manufactured in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico (and both the gas and electric Equinox and the Blazer EV still are).
