Toronto, Ontario — In this weekly economical report, General Motors starts up EV assembly lines in Ontario; Rivian makes its first Canadian deliveries and promises increased production in Q4 while the Canadian pension fund offloads some electric shares.
Bring on BrightDrop
The CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ont.—which General Motors spent seven months and more than $2 billion transforming—is officially in business. Reuters reported Monday that the first electric delivery trucks rolled off the assembly line yesterday morning.
The upstart unit of GM also announced DHL Canada as its first customer outside the U.S.
According to the BrightDrop website, the GM subsidiary offers a “system of connected products targeting first- and last-mile delivery customers, including light commercial electric vehicles, ePallets and cloud-based software.”
The unit launched in 2021 and is projected to reach US$1 billion in sales next year, according to a statement from BrightDrop Chief Executive Travis Katz.
CAMI Ingersoll formerly manufactured the Chevy Equinox.
Batteries beyond the U.S. border
In a similar vein, Rivian has officially started delivering its passenger vehicles to the Canadian market.
The company made its first deliveries to Rivian employees on Nov. 17, followed by a customer open house in B.C., where the EV startup gave customers an up-close look at the R1S and R1T models.
The company maintains that the first public Canadian customer deliveries will take place before the end of the year, according to Teslarati.
Rivian said it produced 7,363 units and delivered 6,584 vehicles during Q3 of 2022.
“The ramp in production is in line with our expectation despite the challenging supply chain environment,” wrote the company alongside its Q3 results. “In July 2022, our increased production enabled us the opportunity to transition outbound freight from truck to rail, which provided additional outbound logistics cost savings.”
The company expects another increase in production volume in Q4, which “will cause a larger discrepancy between production and deliveries.”
As of Monday afternoon, Rivian was trading at 29.78 per share, down 71 percent year-to-date.
Release the charge
Canada’s largest pension fund (by assets) has significantly reduced its holdings in electric vehicle companies in recent months—namely in Tesla and Chinese automakers NIO, Xpeng and Li Auto.
As of June 30, the Canadian pension fund held 230,061 Tesla shares; which increased to 690,183 shares following the company’s three-for-one stock split in late August.
But, according to a regulatory filing from Sept. 30, the Canadian pension fund held 368,867 Tesla shares—dropping nearly half of its stake in Tesla in Q3.
A report from TheStreet.com also says the Canadian pension plan dropped “virtually all its stake” in Chinese EV makers NIO, Xpeng and Li Auto during Q3, but did not specify the number of shares still held in each.
