GM Pours Millions into Detroit

DETROIT-General Motors Co. plans to invest $336 million to outfit a local factory for production of the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid car. With this latest investment GM has plans to infuse Detroit factories with roughly $700 million to produce this new car, according to a Wall Street Journal article. The Volt production is meant to give Toyota’s hybrid the Prius a run for it’s money. To read the article click here.

In the summer, GM officials said the company planned to invest $43 million in the Brownstown Township battery assembly plant.

GM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June citing $172.8 billion of debt. The company tried to sell off a number of its smaller lines, although those deals didn’t all close. For instance, Penske planned to purchase Saturn but walked from the deal in September. GM decided to close that arm instead of pursue another purchase deal.

Earlier in December, GM’s president and CEO Fritz Henderson resigned from the position he had held for a few months. Edward Whitacre was pegged to replace Henderson.

Mark Reuss, president of North American operations, said earlier in the week that GM plans to begin repaying the federal government the money it was loaned this month, with plans to have the entire debt repaid by the end of 2010. The company will repay $1 billion this month to make the first dent in the $6.7 billion it owes. The government lent GM a total of $50 billion to bail the company out, but the vast majority of that was turned into an ownership stake when GM emerged from bankruptcy.

“We need to repay the money that we borrowed, and I think everybody in this company wants that desperately. We want to make people in this country proud of General Motors, its employees and its dealers,” Reuss said on a conference call.