GM kills BrightDrop electric van production, blames ‘slow demand’ as sales were ramping

General Motors today pulled the plug on its BrightDrop electric delivery van program, announcing it will permanently end production at its CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario.

This is a disappointing reversal for a program that was supposed to be a cornerstone of GM’s commercial EV ambitions.

In a statement, the company blamed a “slower than expected” commercial EV market, a “changing regulatory environment,” and the elimination of US tax credits for the decision. Production will not be moved elsewhere; the BrightDrop Zevo line is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

The move comes just two years after GM, with $500 million in Canadian government support, celebrated opening CAMI as Canada’s “first full-scale EV manufacturing plant.”

The company delivered a marginal 146 vans in the US in 2022 and just 497 in all of 2023.

But things were finally picking up this year despite a production pause in April.

Data from 2025 shows the ramp was finally hitting its stride, with sales reportedly jumping to 2,384 units in the third quarter alone—a massive 869% increase year-over-year. The company was on track to sell around 4,000 units this year.

That’s not a massive number, but it was heading in the right direction.

GM, however, sees it differently. As noted by industry observers, GM executives are comparing BrightDrop’s 4,000 sales to the 60,000+ sales of its ancient, gas-guzzling Chevy Express and GMC Savana vans, a platform that dates back to the 1990s.

While GM’s official statement to the CBC was that the decision was “simply a demand and a market-driven response,” the Unifor auto union isn’t buying it. The union, which represents the 1,200 laid-off workers, squarely blamed the “dangerous and destabilizing auto policies” of the Trump administration for undoing EV supports.

Furthermore, vehicle programs that cross the US-Canada border have faced significant challenges in 2025 due to the trade war launched by the Trump administration against Canada.

Electrek’s Take

It’s another EV pullback partly based on government actions.

But we can’t blame everything on Trump. GM is quick to pull back its EV programs due to political considerations, which do drive demand.

The company took half a billion dollars in taxpayer money to retool a factory, only to abandon it less than 36 months after the first van rolled off the line. They are abandoning what will undoubtedly be a growing market in the long term, ceding ground to Ford’s E-Transit and Rivian’s van, and blaming “low demand” at the very moment sales were beginning to spike.

Brightdrop’s lineup was a bit bigger than other commercial electric vans, which might have limited its market, but I still think that long-term, there will be a singnifcant market for electric vans in this segment.