General Motors to close seven factories globally

GM has announced that it will be closing five North American plants by the end of 2019, which will include the assembly facility in Detroit, Ohio and Ontario, Canada, as well as transmission factories in Michigan and Maryland. They will also close two unnamed factories outside North America.  This is all in addition to the previously announced closure of the Korean plant.

GM’s sales in North America have been hit hard following a recent fall in the demand for sedans. General Motors will follow rival Ford’s example by removing most of the sedan lineup for that market. The brand will discontinue the Chevrolet Cruze, Impala, Volt, Cadillac CT6, Buick LaCrosse and will instead focus on their SUVs and trucks.

A ‘Staff Transformation’ procedure will be undertaken by GM, which will see them reduce their overall workforce by 15 percent, which roughly translates to 18,000 jobs. GM claims 25 percent of this reduction will be of executive staff.

With these reductions in workforce and factories, the automaker hopes to reduce costs to the tune of £3.5 billion (about Rs 31,800 crore).

GM has been struggling with sales for some time now and earlier this year they sold Vauxhall and Opel, their British and European brands. As the brand has developed a new vehicle platform to improve their current lineup, it will focus future investments on developing its next generation of battery electric vehicles.

In the Indian market, GM used to retail Chevrolet cars but had halted domestic sales in 2017. However, the carmaker’s facility in Talegaon, which has an annual production capacity of about 1.6 lakh units, is still operational and churns out models for export markets only. The brand also has a technical centre in Bengaluru that is currently operational.