General Motors bet big on electric vehicles and now employees are paying the price. We recently saw this play out in Canada, where over a thousand workers lost their jobs when BrightDrop vans were axed last week.

The cuts are now happening stateside as approximately 1,750 workers will be laid off. According to CNBC, the hardest impact will be felt at Factory Zero in Michigan, where around 1,200 jobs will be eliminated. An additional 550 people will be let go at the Ultium Cells plant in Ohio.

More: GM Lays Off Hundreds After Saying Business Is Going Great

On top of the indefinite cuts, there will reportedly be 1,550 temporary layoffs. These are said to be spread across Ultium Cells plants in Ohio and Tennessee, with the latter impacting 700 people.

In a series of statements, the automaker said the changes were “in response to slower near-term EV adoption and an evolving regulatory environment.”

This appears to be a reference to the elimination of the clean vehicle tax credit as well as the relaxing of regulations under the Trump administration.

Factory Zero builds the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, GMC Hummer EV, and Cadillac Escalade IQ. These models weren’t exactly flying off dealer lots even when there was a $7,500 federal incentive.

Promises and Pauses

The company said they remain committed to U.S. manufacturing and believe their “investments and dedication to flexible operations will make GM more resilient and capable of leading through change.”

That remains to be seen, but GM is pausing battery cell production in Warren, Ohio as well as in Spring Hill, Tennessee this January. Both plants are scheduled to reopen in mid-2026 and the downtime will be used to upgrade the facilities to provide “greater flexibility.”

It’s not entirely clear what that means, but the company said “Impacted employees may be eligible to continue receiving a significant portion of their regular wages or salary, plus benefits.”

Corporate Optimism Meets Reality

The news comes roughly one week after CEO Mary Barra told investors the company “delivered another very good quarter of earnings and free cash flow.”

She added the automaker achieved their highest third-quarter market share since 2017 and were raising their full-year guidance.

Despite being upbeat, Barra warned of cuts by saying “it is now clear that near-term EV adoption will be lower than planned. That is why we are reassessing our EV capacity and manufacturing footprint.” Despite this and new investments in ICE-powered vehicles, she said “electric vehicles remain our North Star.”

The autonomous driving space is always shifting, and today General Motors revealed that buyers of the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ will be able to drive without watching the road. That’s only one part of the automaker’s new announcements that also include Google Gemini and Vehicle-to-Grid power.

Moving Autonomy Forward

Eyes-off driving is something plenty of automakers have talked about, but few are even close to delivering. General Motors currently sells cars with Super Cruise, a Level 2 system that can accelerate, brake, and change lanes.

However, it can only do this on specific highways and the driver must maintain attention on the road at all times. That said, it’s Super Cruise that is laying the foundation for eyes-off driving.

More: I Tried Out GM’s Smarter Super Cruise And It Feels Promising

So far, GM says Super Cruise has accrued some five million miles without a single accident attributed to it. The car of the future won’t just let you drive without watching the road – it’ll also let you leverage Google‘s AI bot Gemini to do all sorts of things.

That includes changing settings in the car, but it goes further to the extent that it should be able to learn driver preferences. Think of it as a supercharged version of the memory button.

Rather than just remembering seating and mirror position, it could remap the media buttons, change the display layout, automatically pull up navigation to a routine destination, and more.

Launching next year, it’ll even give drivers guidance on one-pedal driving, monitor maintenance, and help with things like finding a place to eat.

Going Beyond Cars

GM isn’t stopping at AI and autonomous driving. It appears to be picking up some of the Tesla playbook as it says it’ll soon offer bidirectional EV charging, solar integration, and a stationary home battery.

In other words, owners will have the opportunity to sell some of their extra juice back to the grid and then purchase it again later when rates are lower.

Apparently, while electric vehicles might not be growing as rapidly as they used to, the technology around them continues to mature – and that can only be good news for consumers.