General Motors has parked up tens of thousands of SUVs and pickups at facilities across the United States as it awaits semiconductors.
Like some other car manufacturers, General Motors has adopted a “build-shy” production approach during the chip shortage, continuing to operate its most profitable vehicle plants and building SUVs and pickups. However, rather than sending them to dealerships, they are instead being sent to massive parking lots and left to sit there until the company gets the chips they need.
The Detroit Free Press reports that more than 10,000 big SUVs from GM’s Texas plant have been parked, including the Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Tahoe, Chevrolet Suburban, and GMC Yukon. This number is growing by approximately 1,000 vehicles a day, an hourly worker at the Arlington Assembly said.
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Elsewhere, there were 9,275 midsize pickups built at the Wentzville Assembly plant awaiting completion as of Tuesday last week, with more piling up every day. One source says GM plans to keep building another 15,000 trucks at the site before also putting them in storage. Last month, a worker at the Lansing Delta Township plant revealed there were about 15,000 GM vehicles parked nearby awaiting semiconductors.
The Detroit Free Press adds that workers at the Wentzville Assembly site in Missouri completed 30,000 midsize pickups earlier in the summer and shipped them to dealers.
“We’re monitoring this on a weekly basis,” GM chief financial officer Paul Jacobson recently said of the chip crisis. “That’s why we’ve been cautious from our outlook from the beginning.”
