TOLEDO, OH – General Motors Co. announced it will invest $2 billion in U.S. assembly and component plants. One of the major investments will be $204M in the company’s transmission plant in Toledo, which the automaker said will be building a new 8-speed automatic transmission, designed to improve fuel economy in future vehicles.

“We are doing this because we are confident about demand for our vehicles and the economy,” GM Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson said during an event at the 54-year-old Toledo Transmission Plant. “This new investment is on top of $3.4 billion and more than 9,000 jobs that GM has added or saved since mid-2009.”

Over the next few months, GM stated it will make specific facility investment announcements dependent on successful completion of state and local incentives in some communities. According to the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research, the ripple effect of the planned investments would add almost $2.9 billion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and create or retain more than 28,000 jobs.

The company announced the first of the new investments last week, which includes $131 million, and about 250 additional jobs in Bowling Green, Ky., for the next generation Corvette.

GM’s U.S. sales through the first four months of the year are up 24.8 percent over 2010, and the company last week reported its fifth-consecutive profitable quarter since emerging from bankruptcy reorganization in July 2009.