As First Volts Hit Showrooms on Schedule, GM Hires 1,000 EV Engineers

December 20th, 2010 by Susan Kraemer

Wow! We should take over more auto companies! GM now says it’s taking on 1,000 engineers and researchers in Michigan to significantly expand its vehicle electrification expertise and lead in the development of more electric vehicles with extended-range capability, like the Chevrolet Volt.

Already, GM has invested more than $700 million in eight facilities in Michigan to support Volt production. GM has the industry’s largest and most technologically advanced battery systems lab at its Warren, Michigan Technical Center and has invested $336 million at its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, home of the Volt.

It invested another $43 million at the industry’s only battery pack manufacturing plant in Brownstown Township, Michigan. An additional $162 million investment was announced last week to support powertrain operations in Flint and Bay City, Michigan, and Defiance, Ohio.

So, GM has paid back the taxpayer money, has delivered its game-changing car, and done so on schedule, and is now raising the number of electric vehicle engineers to a higher level than any other auto company.

And manufacturing purchasing is going up in the region, according to the Purchasing Managers’ Index. Southeast Michigan has been up for the last eight months at 67.1, up for the eighth straight month and a solid 10.2 points above the national score of 56.9.

Congratulations to our own Gummint Motors! And it is good news for Michigan. We know that the state has been among the hardest hit by the econapocalypse after the record high gas prices of 2008.

Image: Eric Lafforge

Susan kraemer@Twitter

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About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

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http://www.thegreenjobbank.com Bernard the Green Jobs Guru

@lvremodeling: Ford is already building electric cars. It invested $550 million in a retooled plant with 3,200 employees in Michigan building hybrid, all-electric and high-mileage gasoline Focus models.

I couldn’t find a story about it on CleanTechnica, so here’s a link:
http://www.thegreenjobbank.com/stories/ford-completes-550m-electric-vehicle-plant-creates-3200-green-jobs
Sven

Wow! We should take over this piece of crap website! I’ll bet you a million lithium batteries that the Volt ends up being a complete and utter failure.
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http://www.dimensionbuildlv.com lvremodeling

This is good news for GM, hopefully Ford and Chrysler will follow suit and start building all electric cars. The battery development is also welcome, especially for solar technology as well as wind.