In a White House press briefing late on Tuesday Afternoon, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed that President Obama will travel to Holland, Michigan on Thursday to break ground on GM's new advanced-battery plant that will build batteries for the Chevy Volt, due out in 2011.

The only problem with that announcement from Gibbs, at least as far as GM is concerned, is that GM's press conference announcing the development isn't until Wednesday afternoon.

Said Secretary Gibbs in the Tuesday briefing:

So when we go to Holland, Michigan, and break ground on the ninth of nine advanced-battery plants that will construct the electric batteries that we need to power the Chevy Volt that Chevy will produce 50,000 a year of, the question that you’re going to have to ask yourselves, are we going to import that battery? Or is that battery going to say, “Made in America”?

And before the Recovery Act, 2 percent -- we basically were in charge of 2 percent of the global capacity and the manufacturing of the type of batteries that you’re going need for the cars of tomorrow. As a result of the investment in the Recovery Act, by 2014, in just five years, we’ll increase that capacity by 20 -- 20 times. It pushes down the cost of those batteries.

Well, at least Gibbs didn't spill the beans about the entire announcement. For one, I'm curious how many jobs this new Holland, Mich. plant will create or save.

And for that, we'll have to wait for the big announcement from GM later today.  Unless, of course, Gibbs "accidentally" slips those figures into a morning press gaggle.