GM announces Cadillac EV to be built in Warren

WARREN — General Motors Co. has announced an investment at the company’s Global Technical Center to prepare it to build a car that will “challenge the ultra-luxury space with defining design, technology and performance,” the company said in a press release.

Earlier this month, General Motors announced that it would invest $81 million into the Tech Center campus in Warren to prepare it to build the Cadillac Celestiq.

The investment will be used to purchase and install related equipment to hand-build the vehicle, which will be the first vehicle to be built at the Warren facility.

“As Cadillac’s future flagship sedan, Celestiq signifies a new, resurgent era for the brand,” General Motors President Mark Reuss said in the press release.

While performance details on the vehicle were slim, the press release states the car will be built on GM’s Ultium platform, which encompasses common electric vehicle architecture and propulsion components like battery cells, modules, packs, drive units, motors and integrated power electronics.

In addition, the vehicle’s roof is expected to feature a four-quadrant, suspended-particle-device “smart glass” that allows each passenger to set their own level of roof transparency. In the front of the passenger compartment, the driver and front-seat passenger will have a pillar-to-pillar display with active privacy “to help mitigate driver distraction,” the press release states.

While renovations at the plant have already begun, the vehicle is expected to debut in late July.

The news comes several months after GM announced that it would invest in a next-generation battery facility in Warren.

In October 2021, GM announced the Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center, a new facility that “will significantly expand the company’s battery technology operations and accelerate development and commercialization of longer range, more affordable electric vehicle batteries,” the company said in a press release.

The center, which is expected to be completed in the middle of this year, will include cell test chambers, cell formation chambers, several laboratories that will provide researchers and engineers facilities to develop different materials to be used in batteries, a coating room and a forensics lab with material analysis equipment and advanced software, the press release stated.

In his annual State of the City Address held in May, Warren Mayor Jim Fouts said the $210 million investment will bring in “hundreds of highly skilled new jobs.”

“They are building a new 300,000-square-foot innovation facility with the goal of drawing the automakers’ battery technology and accelerating the development of longer-range, more affordable electric batteries, and that’s the wave of the future,” Fouts said.