“We dug a bigger hole very intentionally … and we’re scaling out of that,” Jacobson said of GM’s EV infrastructure, including a network of battery factories. “And that scaling is happening at an increasing rate.”
Among other notable items from GM Oct. 8 were:
The company will build another battery research and development center at its complex in Warren, Michigan. Vice President Kurt Kelty said the added development capacity will help GM more quickly identify possible issues and cut the time needed to get from testing to commercialization by up to a year. Plans call for the new Warren facility to begin production in 2027.
As other OEMs have, GM is making significant cuts to the number of parts needed to build its cars. President Mark Reuss said such work has allowed GM teams to take out an average of 10 parts per car in recent years.
On that re-engineering note, Reuss also poked his peers at Ford Motor Co. in the ribs over the latter’s work on developing its next-generation of EVs: “We don’t need to create a skunkworks to create affordable electric vehicles.”
The company is dropping the Ultium brand rolled out in 2020 for its batteries and other EV components. A new name hasn’t been announced and GM’s two joint-venture plants with LG Energy Solution will continue to operate under the name Ultium Cells LLC.
At a high level, Jacobson said GM’s leaders expect 2025 U.S. auto sales to be right around 16 million, essentially flat from the market’s pace over the past year. GM’s EBIT, he added, will also be in line with 2024’s but he sought to emphasize the company’s progress on expense management—it has trimmed some $2 billion in fixed costs over the past two years and postponed several investment plans—and said those effects will become more apparent in coming quarters.
That transformation journey, Jacobson said, “is becoming very observable. It’s becoming quantifiable.”
Shares of GM (Ticker: GM) finished trading Oct. 8 pretty much flat from the evening before. Around midday Oct. 9, however, they were up nearly 4% to $47.83. Over the past six months, they have risen about 7%, growing the company’s market capitalization to nearly $54 billion.