“We’re continuing to make great progress on our plans to commercialize in 2019,” GM President Dan Ammann said in a statement. “Our Orion and Brownstown teams have proven experience in building high-quality self-driving test vehicles and battery packs, so they are well-prepared to produce the Cruise AV.”

GM will invest more than $100 million to upgrade both facilities, it said. Roof module production has already begun and production of the fourth-generation Cruise AV is expected to begin in 2019.

Autoworkers at the Orion plant have assembled three generations of Cruise self-driving test vehicles, including those used to test driverless-car capabilities in San Francisco. More than 200 of the test vehicles have been assembled at Orion, GM said.
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