General Motors President Mark Reuss announces Monday, January 27, 2020, a $2.2 billion investment at its Detroit- Hamtramck (MI) assembly plant to produce a variety of all-electric trucks and SUVs. GMÕs first all-electric truck will be a pickup with production scheduled to begin in late 2021. The Cruise Origin, a shared, electric, self-driving vehicle unveiled by Cruise in San Francisco last week will soon follow. Detroit-Hamtramck will be GMÕs first fully-dedicated electric vehicle assembly plant. (Photo by Steve Fecht for General Motors)

LORDSTOWN — General Motors will invest $2.2 billion to overhaul its Detroit-Hamtramck facility to be the automaker’s first fully dedicated assembly plant for electric vehicles, which will be powered by battery cells manufactured in Lordstown.

The automaker Monday announced the investment plus plans for its first all-electric pickup truck to begin production in late 2021 followed by the Cruise Origin, an electric self-driving vehicle.

It was announced in December that GM and South Korea’s LG Chem plan to partner in a joint venture to spend $2.3 billion to build the local facility to develop and mass produce the battery cells as GM continues toward becoming all electric.

GigaPower LLC, the working name for the joint venture, would have the plant on 158 acres of property on Tod Avenue adjacent and immediately east of its former Lordstown assembly plant, which closed in March and was sold off in November for a bargain $20 million after 53 years of churning out vehicles.

GM is awaiting environmental clearance from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to build at the location, but intends to break ground at the site in April with expected completion by January 2022.

The facility will create more than 1,100 jobs and has been billed to be, when complete, among the largest battery-cell manufacturing facilities in the world.

GM spokesman Dan Flores on Monday declined to discuss specifics relative to the battery-cell plant’s role in the automaker executing its plan for 20 electric vehicles in production by 2023. Nor would Flores disclose any additional information about the joint venture facility.

“Clearly, it will be an important facility for GM because we envision an all-electric future,” Flores said. “Investments in Detroit-Hamtramck and Lordstown are proof our vision is becoming a reality.”

Detroit-Hamtramck and Lordstown were among the four U.S. plants GM announced in November 2018 would be idled. Detroit-Hamtramck, which sits in both cities, however, came out of summer contract negotiations with a reprieve to make electric vehicles while Lordstown, which local United Auto Workers fought to reopen during those same talks, was shuttered.

Most of the 1,500 UAW 1112 members at the Lordstown plant took jobs at other GM plants.

Detroit-Hamtramck employs about 900 people working one shift to produce the Cadillac CT6 and Chevrolet Impala. At full capacity, the plant will employ more than 2,200.

The factory will be shut down at the end of February, when renovations are expected to begin. The general assembly area as well as the paint and body shops will get major upgrades including new machinery, conveyors and controls, GM said in a statement.

GM also will invest $800 million in equipment for parts suppliers and other projects related to the new electric trucks.

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