Report: More Than a Billion In EV Funds Slated for GM and Stellantis May Be Canceled
General Motors and others were set to receive billions in funding to retool factories and press forward with electrification efforts, but that money has been in danger since President Trump took office, and a recent report from Reuters suggests that the funds are on the chopping block.
The report states that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is considering canceling $1.1 billion in grants to General Motors and Stellantis, which includes $500 million for GM to convert the Lansing Grand River factory for EV production. Stellantis expected to receive $335 million to reboot its Belvidere plant.
The DOE is eying more than $12 billion in grants and funding, which is in addition to more than $7.5 billion in canceled funds for other clean energy projects. The Trump Administration has made it clear that EVs are not its priority, nixing the federal EV tax credit and canceling funds slated for clean energy efforts.
While the grants weren’t extremely large relative to the sums thrown around in the automotive industry, their cancellation could put GM and Stellantis in a tough spot. Retooling is expensive, and Stellantis is in the middle of a turnaround effort, so it doesn’t have a ton of breathing room. Both automakers have backed off the most aggressive of their electrification plans, however, and this might push them further in the other direction.
[Images: General Motors, Stellantis]
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Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.
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To be fair, lets quit handing out subsidies to the petroleum, power and coal industries also. The current administration indicates that they want a level playing field, then make it level for everyone. The subsidies were the previous administration attempt to balance out what China was doing. Now we will fall technologically behind the Chinese in EV's like we have done in a lot of other areas. Maybe it was a poor attempt, but our government has always made subsidies and changes in the tax code to favor particular industries, otherwise the trans continental railroad would have never been built. I believe in leveling the playing field in transportation, but the current administration is not doing that. Just explore the tax code for advantages given to the petroleum, power and coal industries. We eliminated the solar, wind and EV side, lets eliminate the other side too. The government and us taxpayers would save a lot of money.
Tax subsidies for oil, gas and coal development are expected to reduce federal revenue by $12.9 billion from 2022 to 2026 (figure 1). The three largest subsidies are for excess of percentage over cost depletion ($3.3 billion), exceptions for publicly-traded partnership with qualified income derived from certain energy-related activities ($2.7 billion), pollution control ($2.5 billion), and expensing of exploration and development costs ($2.4 billion). per Joint Committee on Taxation December 2022