Electric Cadillac Escalade, GMC pickup headed to production, report says - CNET

This big guy will pack an electric powertrain in the future.

Cadillac

With the Detroit-Hamtramck facility back from the dead following labor negotiations between General Motors and the UAW union, it looks like it's going to become the automaker's central location for electric vehicles.

A Friday report from the Detroit News cites information from LMC Automotive, an auto forecasting company, that claims GM has an electric Cadillac Escalade and GMC Sierra in the pipeline. Both the electric luxury SUV and pickup truck will supposedly begin rolling off the line in 2023.

It's a massive turnaround for a facility that was scheduled to go idle in early 2020 and eventually shut down entirely. UAW-GM labor negotiations saved the Detroit-Hamtramck facility, though GM only said at the time that it had electric pickup truck production planned for the facility as part of its offer to the UAW during negotiations.

The Lordstown plant in Ohio did not face the same sunny outcome and has since been sold to a startup by the name of Lordstown Motors. It also plans to build an electric pickup beginning next year.

Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, confirmed the report with the firm's own information, though the company could not peg the electric GMC model as a Sierra. The electric GMC pickup truck will come first in 2023, followed by the battery-powered Escalade in about six months.

He added, "The electric truck market is getting crowded. All of this competition [will reside] in an unproven market where no company has consistently turned a profit yet."

Both models could be part of GM's overarching plan to introduce 20 electric vehicles by 2023, though many of them are presumably for China.

Cadillac and GMC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.