More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
General Motors is making the largest investment in company history in its home state of Michigan, announcing plans to spend nearly US$7 billion to convert a factory to make electric pickup trucks and to build a new battery cell plant.
The moves, announced Tuesday in the state capital of Lansing, will create up to 4,000 jobs and keep another 1,000 already employed at an underutilized assembly plant north of Detroit.
The automaker plans to spend up to $4 billion converting and expanding its Orion Township assembly factory to make electric pickups and $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion building a third U.S. battery cell plant with a joint-venture partner in Lansing.
GM CEO Mary Barra said the investment would make Michigan "the epicenter of the electric vehicle industry."
The state's economic development board on Tuesday approved $824 million in incentives and assistance for Detroit-based GM. The package was unveiled and authorized by the Michigan Strategic Fund Board. It includes a $600 million grant to GM and Ultium Cells, the venture between the carmaker and LG Energy Solution, and a $158 million tax break for Ultium. The board also approved $66.1 million to help a local electric utility and township upgrade infrastructure at the battery factory site.
Both factories are scheduled to start producing in about two years, as GM rolls the dice on whether Americans will be willing to convert from internal combustion engines to battery power.
The Orion plant will join GM's "Factory Zero" facility in Detroit in building new electric Chevrolet Silverados and GMC Sierra pickups. When both plants are making trucks on three shifts, GM will have the ability to build 600,000 electric pickup trucks per year, Barra said.
Already the company is getting great interest in the trucks from consumers, she said, without giving any numbers of reservations.
The announcement is a critical win for Michigan, which lost out on Ford Motor Co.'s $11 billion investment in three battery plants and a new vehicle assembly plant that went to Kentucky and Tennessee.
GM President Mark Reuss said it made sense for GM to locate the battery factory near its large manufacturing footprint in Michigan. The company's ability to quickly convert existing factories such as Orion to build solely electric vehicles is a competitive advantage over companies that need to costly build brand-new plants, he said.
"We're going to take advantage of that from an assembly plant standpoint, and then we're going to put the new cell plants in the proximity to supply that footprint," Reuss said.
GM says it will build four battery cell factories in North America. The Lansing announcement is its third, but Reuss said more may be needed as the transition to electric vehicles continues. The location of the fourth plant has not been announced.
"We've said four for now, but the adoption rate is rapid," Reuss said. The other battery plants are being built in Lordstown, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tenn.
In Michigan, officials realized the critical nature of winning the GM investment after losing out on Ford's announcement last year.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said the GM announcement shows what can happen when elected officials from both sides of the aisle work together. "We showed everyone that we can compete with transformational projects," she said.
The announcements, which include another $510 million investment to maintain production at two other Lansing-area GM plants, will generate more than $35 billion in personal income during the next 20 years, Whitmer said.
"The economic well-being of our state isn't a partisan matter. High quality jobs don't have party affiliations," Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey said.
Without the GM investment, Michigan risked losing a big chunk of its manufacturing base as the nation and world are expected to shift away from the vehicles it now makes that are largely powered by internal combustion engines. The consulting firm LMC Automotive expects U.S. EV sales to grow from just over 400,000 last year to 2.2 million in 2025. Even then, they still will be only about 13 per cent of total U.S. new vehicle sales.
Reuss said that as the transition to electric vehicles starts, some buyers will substitute EVs for internal combustion trucks, but that number is difficult to estimate. GM, he said, doesn't see the transition moving as fast in heavy duty work trucks. But the company is ready for whatever consumers want to buy, with factories building both versions. "That's the way we're approaching it, very agile, very much a foot in both camps as we do this transition," he said.
Members of the United Auto Workers union are worried that jobs making gas engines, transmissions and other internal combustion vehicle parts eventually could be lost, since electric vehicles have fewer moving parts and are easier to assemble.
GM, which has set a goal of building only electric passenger vehicles by 2035, said that together with Ultium it considered multiple states for the new battery factory. The company has pledged to have 30 electric vehicle models for sale globally by 2025.
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Krisher reported from Detroit.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”