General Motors Co. and Samsung SDI have pulled back on construction of a massive electric vehicle battery plant near New Carlisle, Indiana, with a number of workers on the site laid off earlier this month.
Contractor Barton Malow confirmed the recent layoff at the $3.5 billion project but declined to provide specifics, including how many workers were let go and how many remained onsite. GM spokesperson Kevin Kelly confirmed some workers were taken off the project but declined to provide specifics. He said construction continues.
Bill Schalliol, director of economic development for St. Joseph County, said the construction slowdown comes as GM and Samsung consider making design changes to the project, potentially to make a different type of battery. The plant has been scheduled to make nickel-rich prismatic batteries.
Schalliol said this week there is still some construction activity on the 680-acre site, which is just south of the Michigan border and west of South Bend. Most of the steel frame for the two buildings is in place, he said, and installation of wall panels recently got underway.
News of the slowdown comes as GM aggressively cuts other EV costs and pushes more money back into gas-powered trucks and SUVs. Policies promoting EVs have been rapidly dismantled under President Donald Trump and before that customer demand hadn’t matched initial projections.
The automaker said earlier this week it was laying of thousands of workers who make EVs and batteries across several sites — including at its existing joint-venture Ultium Cells battery plants in Ohio and Tennessee.
Barton Malow, the New Carlisle project contractor, said in a statement that it “recently had to layoff some of our workforce” and that such cuts are “an unfortunate part of the natural ebb and flow of the construction business.”
“We recognize the impact it has on our team members and their families, and commit to supporting them through this transition and working to get them back onto this or another project shortly,” said the company statement sent by spokesperson Eric Fish.
The project’s timeline was previously delayed when the companies last year said they planned to open in 2027, a year after initially planned. Schalliol said the current project slowdown caused a supplier planning to locate near the battery plant to pause its plans.
But he said the plan remains for the battery plant to open by December 2027. It’s scheduled to eventually create 1,600 jobs.
“We’re playing the long game,” Schalliol said, who added he’s confident that the plant will open and produce something, even if it’s not the originally-planned type of EV battery cells. GM didn’t spend all the money on the project, he said, “to convert this into the world’s largest pickleball facility.”
Near the EV battery project, a sprawling Amazon.com Inc. data center complex is also under construction to power artificial intelligence. Dan Caruso, 71, lives about a mile from the battery project and is concerned about how both projects will affect the environment, including with water consumption, as well as how they are altering the feel of the rural agricultural area more broadly.
Caruso said this week that construction is racing ahead on the Amazon site, but activity on the battery plant has notably slowed of late. He’s skeptical that GM and Samsung can finish the project by 2027.
“I don’t see any way, especially with the current environment, with the direction of (Trump’s) ‘drill baby drill,'” he said. “They’re not going to get the energy credits they need to put a battery plant in place.”
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