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GM to add 1,200 workers at 2 Michigan factories

DETROIT — General Motors is adding 1,200 jobs at two Michigan factories to build midsize SUVs and two new luxury sedans. GM said Friday that its Lansing Delta Township plant will get a third shift and 800 more workers to build the Chevrolet Traverse and Buick Enclave SUVs, which have three rows of seats. The Lansing Grand River plant will get a second shift and 400 more workers to build two new Cadillac sedans, the CT4 and CT5. Employees laid off at other GM factories will fill the new jobs first, then workers will be added, GM spokesman Dan Flores said. The company has not determined yet how many new people will be needed, he said. Both additional shifts will start working sometime between April and June, the company said. Lansing Delta Township now employs about 2,500 salaried and blue-collar workers, while the Grand River plant has 1,400. GM sold more than 147,000 Traverse SUVs in the U.S. last year, a 0.4% increase from 2018. Enclave sales were up 3% to just over 51,000, according to Autodata Corp. Related Video:

2016 Chevy Volt will not need premium gas

Buried in the new technical details of the 2016 Chevy Volt released yesterday was a throwaway line about a small but important change that's due to the new 1.5-liter, four-cylinder engine. The first-gen Volt has always required premium gas but the new powerplant will be happy burning plain old regular. The Volt's chief engineer, Andrew Farah, told AutoblogGreen that the change was due to today's Volt owners explaining they were not happy paying for top-shelf petroleum. "The ability to use regular unleaded was based directly on customer feedback," he said. "Since the range extender is an all-new engine, it was optimized to use regular unleaded at the outset. Using regular fuel will not have effect on vehicle acceleration or other performance factors." As Larry Nitz, GM's executive director of vehicle electrification, told AutoblogGreen yesterday, the new engine is more powerful and quieter than the outgoing 1.4-liter engine that's used in the current Volt. Fuel economy and EV range specs for the next-gen Volt are not expected until the full car is revealed at the Detroit Auto Show in January.

GM's latest production delays: Colorado/Canyon, Cadillac CT4/CT5, Camaro

DETROIT — General Motors Co extended production cuts in North America on Wednesday due to a worldwide semiconductor chip shortage that has impacted the auto sector. The U.S. automaker said its Wentzville, Missouri, assembly plant would be idled during the weeks beginning March 29 and April 5. It will extend down time at its plant in Lansing, Michigan, which has been idled since March 15, by two weeks. The action was factored into GM's prior forecast that it could shave up to $2 billion off this year's profit, spokesman David Barnas said. GM did not disclose how much volume would be lost by the move, but said it intended to make up as much lost production as possible later in the year. The chip shortage came as North American auto plants were shut for two months during the COVID-19 pandemic last year and chip orders were canceled, and as demand surged from the consumer electronics industry as people worked from home and played video games. That's now left carmakers competing for chips. Semiconductors are used extensively in cars, including to monitor engine performance, manage functions for everything from steering to automatic windows, and in sensors used in parking and entertainment systems. Vehicles affected by the GM production cuts include the mid-sized pickup trucks, the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon in Missouri, and the Cadillac CT4 and CT5 and Chevy Camaro cars in Michigan. Meanwhile, GM said its San Luis Potosi, Mexico, assembly plant, idled since Feb. 8, will resume production with two shifts beginning the week of April 5. Last week, GM said it was building certain 2021 light-duty full-size pickups without a fuel management module, hurting their fuel economy performance by one mile per gallon. Exacerbating the shortage is a recent fire at a Renesas Electronics chip plant in Japan. Barnas said GM was assessing the impact of the fire.