GM Closing Winter Development Centre in Kapuskasing
Sad news broke late last week as General Motors (GM) announced it was closing its Kapuskasing, Ontario center, a location dedicated to cold weather testing. The company says the work done there had become redundant.
"Through continuous improvement, our cold weather testing capability has greatly improved and evolved, and issues can now be found at the source at the supplier and development stages," GM Canada said in a statement shared with Automotive News.
The vehicle test center, recently specializing in electric vehicles, was GM's only cold-weather durability test site in Canada. It tested all GM vehicles destined for North America.
The facility, located about 800 km north of Toronto, typically tested vehicles five to seven years before production.
We had occasion to visit the facility in March 2023 at the invitation of GM Canada. Significant investments had just been made. Since 2015, GM has spent more than $16 million to adapt the site to test electric models.
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