As a Detroit native, this announcement hit me hard. General Motors is shutting down all three shifts at its Factory Zero plant, laying off 3,300 employees. As Detroit reels from the news, many are looking for someone to blame. While GM did dangle the possibility of reopening some shifts in the future, now may be a good time to move on. These sorts of massive closings are a preview of the industry’s future.
The nuts and bolts of closing Factory Zero
General Motors retooled its factory on the Detroit-Hamtramck border to build EVs in 2020, to much fanfare. The renamed “Factory Zero” currently assembles the GMC Hummer EV, the GMC Sierra EV, the Chevrolet Silverado EV, and the Cadillac Escalade IQ.
Throughout 2025, GM laid off 280 Factory Zero employees. On Sept. 2, it shut down first- and second-shift production “temporarily.” On Oct. 29, the company told the Detroit Free Press it is shuttering the factory until Nov. 24. The full 3,300-worker staff is now laid off.
To be specific, 1,200 workers are on an “indefinite layoff” (which might be more accurately called a furlough). To meet what’s likely a union demand, GM is bringing two shifts back on Nov. 24 so those workers can collect holiday pay. After Jan. 5, it may keep one shift open based on vehicle demand—or Factory Zero may be done.
Detroit stands to lose much more than these 3,300 jobs. Many of these workers are supporting families. A sizable portion of these paychecks go right back into the local economy. A layoff like this will hurt the local economy and may eventually burden the social services system, which in turn raises everyone’s tax rates.
Playing the blame game
As various outlets cover this historic plant closure, you’re going to see everyone looking for someone to blame. Political reporters may blame President Trump. His slicing the EV tax credit from $7,500 to $0 on Sept. 1, instead of tapering it off, sent shockwaves through an industry already struggling with tariffs. Workers such as the Factory Zero staff are the first to feel the full impact of this shift.
Business outlets may dig deeper and blame GM CEO Mary Barra. At the end of August, she dumped half her stock in GM, pocketing about $20 million. She’s still the CEO, despite showing the world she has no interest in preparing her company for the future. She’s been abandoning Detroit for years—moving GM’s white-collar workforce out of the iconic Renaissance Center skyscraper the company built in 1973 and downsizing that staff to offices elsewhere. GM likely hopes to downsize this white collar workforce with AI and by hiring help abroad. The automaker has even threatened to demolish the entire skyscraper if the city doesn’t offer public assistance money to renovate it into high-dollar apartments.
Industry experts may say GM’s overall EV strategy is to blame. Ford’s CEO has admitted that huge $50,000-plus EVs were a disaster. He’s referring to the F-150 Lightning built in Dearborn: its large size means it requires a huge battery pack. This makes it exponentially more costly than small EVs, less efficient, and it takes forever to charge on a road trip. He’s also said that if we are to transition to electric, Americans must “fall back in love with smaller vehicles.” But GM’s Factory Zero just assembles four different flavors of the same huge EV—all of which the company is struggling to sell. When Chevrolet engineers redesigned the compact “Bolt” EV, Barra announced that it’s not a true revival of the efficient car, just a “limited run.”
Can you blame the future?
The Chinese auto industry is already operating “dark factories.” They get this name because they have so few human workers that you could shut off the lights, and these automated factories would keep churning out up to 800 EVs a day. Before the U.S. auto industry can compete with Chinese automakers in foreign markets, it must embrace similar cost-saving innovations. If companies, municipalities, and unions delay this transition, they hurt us all in the long run.
Urban automobile factories were a necessary evil a century ago, when building cars was a labor-intensive process. But emissions from EV plants such as Factory Zero hurt air quality. Shipping goods in and cars out batters local roads.
At the time of the American Revolution, as much as 95% of the population worked in agriculture. Now that number is around 10%. Our economy has evolved in the past, and it’s time for it to evolve again. I doubt any of the workers laid off from Factory Zero would want their children to spend their entire lives in the exact same job.
Now would be a perfect time for General Motors and other companies to plant their flag and transform Detroit into a global center of automotive innovation, design, and marketing. How? Through massive low-cost and free education programs and a commitment to basing divisions such as research and development in the city for decades to come.
