General Motors Co. has launched production of its BrightDrop electric delivery vehicle at CAMI Assembly in Ontario, making it the first EV factory in Canada.
The startup’s electric delivery van products are part of a growing segment and are expected to bring in $1 billion in revenue in 2023, the company said last month. BrightDrop, which had previously only given revenue expectations of $5 billion by mid-decade and possibly $10 billion by 2030, also confirmed it will reach 20% profit margins by the end of the decade.
“Starting volume production is really important; this is a very important product for GM,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst leading Guidehouse Insights.
“This finally starts to get them back into a more competitive offering in the van segment and with electrification, so … it has the potential to be a really strong business for GM.”
GM launched production this week of the larger Zevo 600 electric delivery vans at CAMI. The delivery vans were being manufactured at small scale at a Michigan supplier plant until the CAMI facility was ready for production. Production of the Zevo 400, a smaller model than the Zevo 600, will start in late 2023. BrightDrop expects to make 30,000 next year and scale to 50,000 by 2025.
“I wish I had 50,000 today … demand out there is tremendous,” said Steve Hornyak, BrightDrop’s chief commercial officer, in an interview. “We’re ramping as fast as we can.”
GM formed BrightDrop in 2021. The business is focused on providing emissions-free products for delivery companies. Its products include the Zevo electric delivery vans, Trace eCarts for easier package delivery and the BrightDrop Core software platform.
The automaker invested more than $800 million to convert CAMI for high-volume EV production. The plant was revamped in just seven months — the quickest retooling of a GM plant ever.
“BrightDrop is the fastest product launch in our history, from concept to commercialization in less than two years,” GM President Mark Reuss said during a Monday launch event at CAMI.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended the launch Monday to celebrate what Canada has to offer in the transition to electric vehicles.
“We’re creating a whole supply chain here in Canada so that autoworkers here in Ontario will be able to build electric vehicles with batteries made in Quebec, from nickel mined in northern Ontario and lithium from Alberta,” Trudeau said.
BrightDrop also on Monday announced it’s entering the Canadian market with the addition of DHL Express Canada logistics company as a customer. DHL will add its first Zevo vans to its fleet early next year. The company is also piloting BrightDrop’s Trace eCarts and software platform in Toronto.
BrightDrop has also received requests for electric delivery vans from FedEx Corp., Walmart Inc., Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.
Overall, BrightDrop has 25,000 production reservations and expressions of interest for its electric delivery vans and so far the company has delivered FedEx 150 Zevo vans out of the 2,500 ordered.
“There’s rapidly increasing demand for these types of electric delivery vans from all kinds of logistics fleets,” Abuelsamid said.
These customers “could really get a lot of value out of these types of vehicles because the vehicles, the gas-and-diesel powered vans that they’re replacing, frankly, are not very fuel efficient.”
khall@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @bykaleahall