“I paid a deposit 18 months ago Cadillac LYRIQ and I still haven't heard from my dealer. What's going on at GM that it's taking so long? There is a problem? » – Michel
Answer
Good morning Yes, GM actually has a problem with the production of vehicles based on the Ultium electric platform. While the manufacturer keeps its customers in the dark, GM boss Marry Barra finally gave information about the reason for the delay in production, i.e. vehicle deliveries Ultium.
Ultium Platform Photo provided by: GM
The American magazine Automotive News reports on her comments, and one has to admit that she is fully aware of the situation and is not trying to avoid it. The manufacturer is far from the production of 30,000 units expected for the last quarter of 2023, which will be distributed across the Ultium range. Considering that GM produces almost 6,000,000 vehicles annually, 30,000 over 3 months is already very low. Failure to reach this number shows that there is a real problem in the design chain associated with Ultium.
Ms Barra makes no compromises: “To be honest, we have not done well this year in terms of the capacity of our electric vehicles. » The error lies in the production of Ultium battery modules, whose autonomy is problematic. Despite this boring reality, Ms. Barra remains focused on the immediate future: “When it comes to electrification, we are confident in our portfolio. We are a little disappointed that we have been limited by the empowerment issues in producing battery modules. Essentially, this is not a battery issue per se, but a manufacturing issue and we are working on it. We should have resolved the situation by the middle of next year with improvements in all quarters. »
2022 GMC Hummer EV Photo provided by: GM
GM therefore has about six months to adapt before production of its electric vehicles with Ultium technology is in full swing. That's still a lot of time, and GM certainly can't afford to miss it. GM has already announced that it will delay production of some of its Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV pickup trucks in the Detroit (MI) region to 2025 instead of 2024.
The list of vehicles announced on this platform continues to grow: at Cadillac: LYRIQ, Celestiq, Escalade IQ, Optiq; at Chevrolet: Silverado EV, Equinox EV, Blazer EV; at GMC: HUMMER EV, Sierra EV pickup and SUVs. Add to that the BrightDrop commercial vehicles and the fact that GM will make its platform available to Honda/Acura for the 2024 Prologue and ZDX. We therefore see that the engineers are continuing their work to diversify the series. The bottleneck is noticeable in production.
So there are a lot of people waiting for their electric vehicle from GM. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to continue to wait or turn to another automaker that has greater production capacity than GM.
More details :
- Cadillac (models on offer, tests, videos and news)
- Cadillac Lyriq (price, review, specs, tests and news)