“Our strong ICE business that frankly has gotten stronger, and we still believe there’s growth there,” Barra said.
This is all you really need to know about GM.
Oh you mean the subcompact car didn’t sell well? The 100k penis enlarger didn’t sell well. Guess it the powertrain!!!
The important takeaway:
“Barra said that while EV growth has slowed, demand is still heading in the right direction, noting that US car buyers were on track to purchase 1 million EVs this year for the first time.
“There’s really no reason that EV demand won’t be higher in the years ahead,” she said. “Consideration is rising, the policy environment is favorable. The public charging infrastructure is growing and customer choice is expanding.”
The more important takeaway for GM: “ Costs will be reined in, factories will be delayed, and stock buybacks will recirculate cash to shareholders”
In other words, in the face of a struggling EV business, instead of increasing investment to actually get it moving, they are cutting investment and focussing on paying off shareholders instead of actually fixing what’s wrong
And tellingly, Barra also managed to slip in some praise for the company’s internal combustion engine vehicles, which continue to generate profits for the company at a time when costs are rising across the board. “Our strong ICE business that frankly has gotten stronger, and we still believe there’s growth there,” Barra said.
Sigh. If only GM had actually stuck with the Voltec hybrid powertrain and pushed it forward. 🤦♂️
It’s truly is exasperating to think how much R&D went into perfecting that system only for GM to throw it all in the trash. The fact Toyota of all companies is doing a better job selling the concept of the Volt with the Prius and Rav4 Prime trims is just rubbing salt in the wound.
If it was a good business venture they would have.
You’re right, what was I thinking? GM never makes mistakes.
That assumes people in charge of crunching numbers at GM are perfectly rational and have even studied the possibility. As far as I’m aware there wasn’t even so much as an off hand comment from an engineer at a trade show about looking into reusing the Voltec system on any other platform before killing off the whole line.
It’s entirely possible they did look into recycling the tech elsewhere but GM has a track record of just writing off tech right as they iron out the kinks.
They should have made a chevy volt truck.
there are big rumors that hybrids may come back in some markets but not necessarily the US but that remains to be seen
I still remember the GM AUTOnomy concept from 21 years ago. seemed like an incredible idea at the time then it just… went away
Oh yeah. Has nothing to do with all the dealers that tried to tack on a $10k market adjustment and thousands in BS fees on a BOLT, that made it cheaper to buy a Tesla.
Or the fact when I had an issue that disabled fast charging on the car 200 miles away from home and I had to rent a Tesla to get home because it took them almost a week to fix because they only had “1 EV engineer” in a major city in California who did a 20 minute software reprogramming to resolve the issue, that any ICE tech could have done.
My next car won’t be a GM product. The dealers are the problem and when I even complained to EV concierge they gave zero shits, didn’t call the dealer for updates like they said they would, I didn’t even get an apology for the inconvenience.
GM is the one who decides what’s required to make a tech allowed to work on their EVs.
Also their low supply is what led to markups last year. Everyone has markups these days for low supply cars because OEMs aren’t making enough.
These shortages ended a couple for months ago. Dealerships are going to need to move cars pretty fast in the short term if they don’t want to get left with too much debt and depreciation
right, because tesla charging $70k for a stripper model y was totally not the same thing at all
No, it wasn’t. Tesla was moving their cars at high velocity and found the top price that keeps them moving.
Dealers aren’t doing that to EVs, they are radically overpricing.
Dealer markup only helps the dealer and hurts the manufacturer with high fixed costs. At least Tesla got some money which they can, and did, put back into capital improvements for future models.
Tesla was moving their cars at high velocity and found the top price that keeps them moving
the top price which apparently came down 40% in less than a year? besides, this matters to the consumer how exactly?
Dealers aren’t doing that to EVs, they are radically overpricing.
back when i was fruitlessly trying to buy a mackey, every dealer i called said they have nothing on the lot because all allocations and abandoned customer orders were getting bought up immediately. and the lowest markup i found was $5k
At least Tesla got some money which they can, and did, put back into capital improvements for future models.
aside from the fact that this is is incredibly naive, it generalizes beautifully to other manufacturers, like gm announcing they’re doing a $10b stock buyback.
> the top price which apparently came down 40% in less than a year?
yes, they were very responsive to demand and immediately changed price and advertised so, entirely unlike the dealers.
> besides, this matters to the consumer how exactly?
It’s very easy to buy a Tesla at a low price now, and hard to buy a competing EV at a competitive price because of dealer greed and lack of desire, so people don’t.
so the market changed overnight? funny how that works
How can anyone complain about a $10k dealer markup in 2022 when tesla had the exact same thing, just from them directly. They cranked up the price in 2022, and dropped it back down in 2023. It’s the same thing, just going in to a different pocket.
I agree that in both cases, it is just the company rationally responding to supply and demand.
But there is a huge difference in that Tesla is completely upfront and shows you the total price at all times, while dealerships will lie straight to your face, waste your time, and pull all kinds of bullshit moves to try and jack up the price. I was livid at how my Bolt purchase went at a Chevy dealer. No respect or integrity.
GM dealers simply had the benefit of a manufacturer not providing enough EVs for the consumers. If they can deliver in volume then dealers will have less of a window where they can mark up vehicles as there will be dealers who just want to move vehicles and recoup through manufacturer incentives and hold back.
I believe you, but I just want to note that I have had the exact opposite experience with my EV concierge. They have always been really responsive and on top of things. I am 100% with you about the dealerships. They are a huge pain in the ass and they are the reason you even need an EV concierge, which is ridiculous. You shouldn’t need some special party to interface with a fucking car dealership to repair anything.
And due to that they will do a $10B share buyback, that certainly will help its EV business
I hope they do so I can sell my stock in that shitty company at a slightly less loss at this point. They are not going to survive the next 10 years.
Barra is a LOSER.
Please take your golden parachute.
She is leading the charge on EVs though
Tbh, so are we.
Mary Barra did say multiple times in 2022 and this year that GM will overtake Tesla in EV sales by 2025.
I want to have what she is having.
Lest we forget their pronouncements in March 2020…
“What we have done is build a multi-brand, multi-segment EV strategy with economies of scale that rival our full-size truck business with much less complexity and even more flexibility,” said Barra.
GM will offer 20 new EVs for sale by 2023, said GM President Mark Reuss. Those will be available in the United States and China. GM said it targets selling 1 million EVs a year between those two markets in five years.
1 barrel of coke coming up
She’s probably having a lawsuit. I can’t imagine investors accepting these lies when the company becomes unprofitable.
lol lies like “FSD coming end of year this year” 🤡
Wait a minute, I thought she was leading the way?
Trying to turn their current crop of huge, heavy SUVs and trucks into EVs is a fool’s errand. The battery packs required to give these beasts the range that people expect of them will be prohibitively expensive, making the trucks themselves so expensive they will sell poorly, and GM won’t be making much of a profit on them anyway.
No, GM would rather stick to making big, stinky, oversized trucks, and then they will lobby against all green regulations that could be seen to be an impediment to selling these things.
Oh, what’s that? The smear campaign isn’t going well?
honestly this is looking more like the truth. they thought they could pretend to be pivoting to EVs while trying to “prove” that they wouldn’t be feasible over ICE vehicles, then when Bolt sales took off they panicked and canceled it, only to bring it back when more federal money was thrown at it.
Yeah, they invested 10s of billions of dollars in constructing factories to “pretend”… They canceled the Bolt because they expected Ultium to ramp faster. They couldn’t ramp Ultium as fast as they had wanted to because of a delay with a supplier for the equipment used to make modules and packs.
Lol, if this was a “smear campaign,” they wouldn’t have spent billions developing a modular EV platform and so many EV vehicles. They would have take the Ford route of slapping batteries in their gas platforms (Mach-E & Lightning), if anything at all.
I have no doubt that they are serious about EVs (they’ve been trying every few decades since the early 1900s, but the tech just hasn’t been there until now), but it’s clear they’re facing some set backs that are definitely not part of their plan.
I think we should spend more time judging companies who aren’t trying like Toyota, Stellantis, etc.
GM is fucked. First it’s the all of the defective Volts with the Shift to Park defect which there is NO fix for. Then the Battery issue with the Bolts. GM is being sued buy customers and having to give customers FULL purchase price refunds plus attorney’s fees which is about $300k per car.
- Take the Bolt
- Make it DCFC faster
- Do nothing else
- Profit
They’re doing that. The Bolt 2.0 will use a CATL LFP pack.
Note: not Ultium!
I predict the Bolt will be much more popular than their Ultiums, which will be overly expensive and potentially unreliable.
Aha. Does that mean they will be ineligible for a rebate?
I hope this thing comes out soon – it could be an ideal vehicle for me if it’s equally affordable and practical.
Make it DCFC faster
Do nothing else
Profit
Problem is that charging speed is dependent on battery size (and type). To make the Bolt charge faster you have to put in a way better (and more expensive) battery. Which negates the ‘Profit’ part unless you make it more expensive.
I’m pretty sure the bolt was a compliance car, and they never actually made any money off of it.
I remember them pitching it as a Model 3 competitor. They were too EV naive to understand all the reasons that it didn’t really compete. DCFC was literally optional (why would people want to road trip EVs?).
It didn’t help that most people that I showed it to thought it was ugly. I never minded the appearance, but it wasn’t a selling point.
Wasn’t the Spark their compliance car?
I’d also say make a station wagon version
Literally this
Change 3 to “add back CarPlay” and I agree.
The current bolt does have CarPlay. That’s why #3 is the best part of this plan
“Why doesn’t the QB just throw a touchdown pass each time?”
If it were that simple to profit they’d have done it.
This is powerful circular logic. Literally something that hasn’t been done must not be profitable because they would have already done it in order to discover its profitability.
But how do you think they would know that it’s profitable if they’ve never done it? Do you really think they’re that much smarter than you? Because they do “market research”, which is why GM has never made a bad car before?
Maybe just recognize that they have no clue like the rest of us; they’re just the ones with control of the decisions being made.
Oh wow. You’re saying the decision making process at a large company is complex and we don’t know all the facts? That’s totally different… wait, no that’s pretty much what I said but you used more words.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
This sounds quite familiar
OMG. This video hurts. I’ve definitely had exactly this meeting
This is the correct response to almost every poster in this sub. Armchair consultant, engineers, battery chemistry experts, manufacturing experts, powertrain design engineers, etc etc etc
Mary barra doesn’t seem very bright to me at all. Every time she talks it comes off as hollow and pompous