General Motors has confirmed that it's cutting 15% of its workforce to save $6 billion.
It will cut car production and stop building several slow-selling models, and slash its North American workforce.
It's the biggest restructuring by GM in North America since its bankruptcy a decade ago.
GM says it plans to halt production next year at three assembly plants - Lordstown, Ohio, Hamtramck, Michigan, and Oshawa, Ontario.
The company also plans to stop building several models now assembled at those plants.
GM said it will shift more investment to electric and autonomous vehicles.
The issue will be addressed in talks with the United Auto Workers union next year. GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra disclosed the plan.
"We are right sizing capacity for the realities of the marketplace" she said, adding that the cuts were prompted by auto industry changes.
GM shares were last up over 2% at $36.72 before being halted.
Cost pressures on GM and other automakers and suppliers have increased as demand waned for traditional sedans.
The company has said tariffs on imported steel, imposed earlier this year by the Trump administration, have cost it $1 billion.
A Canadian union, Unifor, which represents most unionised auto workers in Canada, said it was informed by GM that there would be no product allocated to the plant in Oshawa, about 60 km from Toronto, after December 2019.
GM employs about 2,500 union staff in Oshawa.
GM has begun what is expected to be a long and expensive transition to a new business model that embraces electrified and automated vehicles, many of which will be shared rather than owned.
The number one US automaker signaled the latest belt-tightening in late October when it offered buyouts to 50,000 salaried employees in North America, with the aim of reducing headcount by 18,000. It plans to trim executive ranks by 25%, the source said.
An industrywide slowdown in passenger car sales started to pick up steam in 2017.
The shift by US consumer preferences have been away from passenger cars to larger, more comfortable SUVs and pickup trucks has been swift and severe, leaving automakers scrambling to readjust.
As recently as 2012, passenger cars made up more than half of all US new vehicle sales.
Through the first nine months of 2018, that had fallen to around a third.
