We’ve been indulging in a lot of mourning over the shutterring of GM’s Australian Holden plant, but it looks like it has a future: to build EVs. Billionaire Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance intends to use the plant to build a new line of EVs that will use Former F1 designer Gordon Murray’s istream technology, which uses carbon fiber technology to make exceptionally light, strong and safe structures, and as such are particularly favorable to EVs.
Electrek.com says that GFG Alliance hasn’t yet officially gone public with their intentions, but says:
“the Adelaide’s The Advertiser reported on a letter that the South Australian treasurer, Tom Koutsantonis, sent to GM Holden in support of the plan. He wrote in the letter:
“We are incredibly excited and supportive of the GFG Alliance’s bid and subsequent plans to ensure the continuation of our very proud history of automotive excellence and innovation in South Australia.
We believe that the GFG Alliance’s plans would put South Australia at the forefront of the inevitable transition of the Australian market to electric vehicles and ask that all due consideration be given to their bid and the potentially significant benefits to the automotive industry and broader community in South Australia.”
Sounds like quite a change from building big, heavy RWD gas-powered sedans.
I can’t help but notice the parallel to how the former GM/Toyota NUMMI plant is now building Teslas.
Didn’t escape my notice.
That factory is the largest manufacturing employer in the San Francisco Bay Area by a factor of 3X (6500 employees). I’m not sure how that compares to the heyday of the Fremont plant in the GM or NUMMI days, not to mention when we had Ford, Lockheed, IBM and others in the area, but electric car manufacturing doesn’t have to be a cottage industry. Best wishes for this Australian plant!
Does this mean that Holden’s workers have a job? What happens with the Ford and Toyota plants that also have been shut down?
Does this mean that Holden’s workers have a job?
I don’t know for sure, but I assume they would have to apply for jobs at the new EV plant. I doubt it’s automatic. But at least it means there are jobs available for them, at least some of them.
Ford and Toyota plants are 450 miles from there, in Melbourne. They’re in good(ish) locations, and will become housing.
Holden workers in Adelaide loved their jobs, and have put up their hands immediately.
I don’t think they will be housing, the Holden Fisherman’s Bend factory in Port Melbourne is set to be a commercial precinct, Toyota is keeping most of its sites, otherwise that part of Altona North is firmly industrial, and I expect Ford’s Broadmeadows site will be the same, sandwiched between a rail line and highway. Part of the property at the north end that was sold of a decade or so ago was redeveloped as an industrial park.
Carbon fiber in mass production has been a siren song for many years. It’s ideal in every way except cost and scale. Here’s hoping they’re the ones to finally break through to volume.
Carbon fiber bicycle frames and components (forks, wheels, handlebars and more) are pretty mainstream on high-end bikes now. Not cranked out 100% by machine yet … the process, at least for structural bike parts, still involves some skilled hand labor on orienting the fiber layup … but it feels like it’s past a certain tipping point. My road bike and mountain bike are both carbon and my wife’s carbon-frame mountain bike has carbon wheels (rims) as well. The material doesn’t have to be too costly and compared with extruding, machining and welding aluminum there’s not a huge premium.
Forgive my cynicism, I’m not sure how many “intended futures” there have been for the plant. The site has been sold to a developer (Pelligra Group) to be re-developed as a business park.
Maybe Mr Gupta can make a deal with them to retain some or all of the existing factory buildings (not the ones that look like they still have asbestos roofs?). Mind you, it would be good if it does go ahead and is successful.
Meanwhile in Detroit, the historic Albert Kahn designed Packard plant will be revived to produce nuclear powered autonomous people movers.
Actually, there’s a mini=brewery going to open later this year at the Packard plant. So, the autonomous people movers will actually be beer powered!
Is it April 1st prematurely? If this was an announcement from Toyota, it could possibly be believable, but GM (?), well that is another story and is at a differing level of believability, so for the immediate future, this news should be treated as the equivalent of “vaporware” and merely fanciful dreaming. Am I truly cynical? Naw, just realistic, don’t you think? More about this anon, it seems inevitable. For now, a big HaHa, and thanks to Paul for my big laugh of the day.
BTW, was this dreamed up in some bar on Hindley St. in Adelaide over a few drinks? Sounds like it!
Well, it’s certainly not an announcement from GM, as the text makes quite clear.
But yes, there have been quite a few announcements by new start-ups about building EVs. many want to follow in Tesla’s footsteps. Easier said than done.
It does remind me of the pecking at MG Rover’s corpse, and talk of how to use Longbridge. Gordon Murray’s name cropped up then too.
Ive seen this announced elsewhere, true or not I have no idea though it does sound like a good one, EVs are getting more common roadside charging stations in strange places are popping up in NZ to keep range anxiety at bay and ex JDM used EVs are on sale by the boat load, its a trend thats not going to stop anytime soon.
Well, this sent me down a nice rabbbit hole, chasing Mr Sanjeev Gupta. He’s the scion of a wealthy Indian industrialist, with his own dizzying investments in steel and power. He’s bought a number of distressed UK steel mills and power plants, and did the same in Whyalla (200 miles north of Adelaide) with a distressed steel plant there only late last year, so he’s putting his(?) money on the table. Seems a great deal less cynical than the cowboys from Phoenix who were clearly only ever going to strip n’ burn the corpse of Rover. His ideas of how to revive these dead plants and even the EV idea aren’t crazy, but I have the feeling the unknown finances behind him seem to be the type that collapse in the slightest downturn, when it all turns out to be based on borrowings. He says not.
Also hard to know how a car could be built when most of the supply chain has exited when the carmakers did.
On balance, it’s not nuclear powered autonomous Packards, but it’s not going to happen either.
The former Mitsubishi plant in Normal, IL had been bought by a metro Detroit EV startup, Rivian. Rivian claims to be planning the start of production in 2020.