General Motors gives up on BrightDrop electric vans

General Motors is abandoning its Brightdrop electric delivery van, right? Four years after the introduction of the vehicle.

Company announcement Along with third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, it said it made the decision because “the commercial electric delivery van market has evolved much more slowly than expected.” GM also attributes the second Trump administration’s hostility to EVs to “the changing regulatory environment and the elimination of tax credits in the United States.”

BrightDrop production has been suspended at GM’s CAMI assembly facility in Ontario, Canada, while the company Also 500 job cuts. GM said Tuesday it needed to have “meaningful discussions” with Canadian government leaders about “opportunities” for the plant. Meanwhile, GM told TechCrunch that BrightDrop dealers will “continue to sell and service vehicles as they work through remaining inventory.”

The decision to shut down BrightDrop comes at an odd moment for electric vehicles in the US. Companies like GM posted record sales of new EVs in the third quarter, though that boost was driven in part by the expiration of federal tax credits, which Republicans in Congress have decided to end.

Meanwhile, major automakers like GM have spent much of the past year scaling back once-high promises about how many EVs they plan to build and sell in the coming years. GM, which once promised Fully electric fleet by 2035Tuesday boasts that it is “well positioned to meet strong, sustainable demand” for internal combustion vehicles. (Investors rewarded that decision. GM’s stock price rose 14% at the time of publication.)

BrightDrop’s brief existence has been chaotic. GM The program has been published As a pseudo-startup in 2021. The automaker spun off BrightDrop in its “Global Innovation” organization (where OnStar was built) and spun it off as a privately held company.

BrightDrop launched at the Consumer Electronics Show that year. The automaker cites lower total cost of ownership and less frequent maintenance as advantages over its internal combustion counterparts. BrightDrop vans seem poised to quickly take advantage of the fact that big companies like FedEx are pushing to become carbon-neutral and emission-free. BrightDrop also came into existence at a time when the pandemic was fueling a massive e-commerce boom, increasing the need for delivery vans.

Exactly two years later, G.M absorbed In Brightdrop’s overall fleet business, GM Involve. The unit’s CEO, Travis Katz, has resigned. Some vans started catch fireWithdrawal by early 2024. Then the GM moved Brightdrop again, this time Within Chevrolet’s commercial division. The automaker continues to struggle to sell brightdrop vans this year, Barely 1,500 were sold in the first half.

It’s unclear why, exactly, GM struggled so mightily to sell its Brightdrop van. And while there were plenty of indicators the unit was struggling, the decision seemed a bit sudden. Earlier this month, GM Involve vice president Ian Hucker talked about Brightdrop’s vans in a press release about a partnership with delivery driver company Frontdoor Collective and infrastructure company Circuit EV. That partnership is supposed to deliver 50 BrightDrop vans for Target use in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

GM is not alone. Sales of Ford’s e-Transit van are far below where they were in 2024. But Rivian said More than 25,000 electric vans On the road with Amazon for the past few years. And sold by Los Angeles-based startup Harbinger Its more than 200 electric truck chassis from Production started in April. On Tuesday morning, Harbinger also announced it Sales expansion in Canada.