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GM has pledged to fund an additional $ 7 billion for electric car and autonomous vehicle programs, and will launch 30 new electric vehicles globally through 2025, CEO Mary Barra announced today. Two-thirds of these new electric vehicles will be available in North America as well 40% (!) of GM’s US model line will be battery electric vehicles by 2025. GM also announced that it would move its US debut of the Cadillac Lyriq SUV from late 2022 to early 2022.
But GM has been making a lot of announcements lately, but if you go to a GM dealership today, there’s a small chance you’ll see an EV. Should we take GM at its word?
With this announcement, GM has now dedicated more than $ 27 billion to electric and high-speed vehicles through 2025, which eclipses its planned spending on gas and diesel vehicles and accounts for the majority of GM’s and global capital expenditure. product development in that time frame.
Cadillac, GMC, Chevrolet and Buick will each have electric vehicles available at all prices. GM will make at least three unannounced GMC vehicles, four Chevrolets, four Cadillacs and two Buicks, including GMC and Chevy pickup trucks and a compact Chevy crossover.
However, GM’s plans don’t just end with the money and promises of future vehicle launches. The company is continuing its “Ultium” battery technology (developed in collaboration with LG Chem) and expects the batteries to cost 60% less and have double the energy density of current packages by the middle of the decade. This will allow some Ultium-based vehicles to achieve a maximum range of up to 450 miles (which is likely far more than necessary). GM is exploring the possibility of licensing Ultium to other automakers, including Honda, which it announced, and Nikola, which it has been silent on lately.
Electric vehicle batteries have steadily improved over the years, generally at a rate of 5-10% per year. So the expected improvement from GM is roughly in line with the high end of that tech curve, although these projections may be slightly optimistic.
GM also shared that it plans to sell one million electric vehicles by the middle of the decade (a number that Tesla, a much smaller automaker, already passed in March). GM has currently sold less than 100,000 BEVs with its Chevy Bolt, although the Volt PHEV / Cadillac ELR also sold quite well before being retired.
As for specific models, GM has accelerated plans for both the Hummer EV and the Cadillac Lyriq EV. GM announced a $ 2 billion investment in an electric vehicle factory in Tennessee just last month, where the Lyriq is planned to be built. Cadillac now plans to launch Lyriq in the first quarter of 2022, nine months ahead of its previous late 2022 program.
The Hummer EV was originally announced with a slow launch, with the first trim levels available in 2021, while buyers of the base model will have to wait until 2024. GM did not specify whether this announcement means the timing for the levels. lower outfitting would have been accelerated.
However, they said the development time for the Hummer EV was only 26 months, compared to a standard of around 50 months. GM expects this to be its new benchmark for developing new vehicles, which will allow them to launch the promised EV models in a much tighter timeline than has traditionally been the case.
This may allow us to see some models much sooner than otherwise expected. So far, we’ve seen some spy photos of what could be an electric Cadillac SUV, the trademark of something called “E-Ray,” but little else is publicly available. Electrek’s Seth Weintraub attended GM’s EV Day in March and saw GM’s upcoming EVs in the flesh, so many are currently in development and more on that soon.
In the comments on these announcements, Barra said:
“Climate change is real and we want to be part of the solution by putting everyone in an electric vehicle. We are moving to a fully electric portfolio from a position of strength and are focused on growth. We can accelerate our EV plans because we are rapidly building a competitive advantage in batteries, software, vehicle integration, manufacturing and customer experience. “
President elect (e Chevy Corvette owner) On Monday, Joe Biden met with Barra, union leaders and other CEOs from the automotive and tech industries. We can imagine that electric vehicles have been a topic of conversation, given Biden’s nearly $ 2 trillion climate plan, which includes plans to expand the adoption of electric vehicles. When asked specifically, GM says the change in U.S. leadership wasn’t a factor in today’s announcement, although it welcomes a return to the $ 7,500 tax rebate for all manufacturers Biden pushed.
During a conference call with reporters last night, GM said today it will make some announcements about specific electric vehicles at the Barclay auto event. Electrek will obviously be “on the scene”.
Take by Electrek
Despite these big plans, GM is sending mixed signals. The company is still allied with the coal lobbyist-led EPA to sue California for higher emissions standards, which doesn’t make much sense for a company that’s supposedly serious about electric cars. When we asked GM chairman Mark Reuss about this earlier this year, he gave us a false Orwellian logic that GM’s opposition to higher emissions standards is somehow meant to encourage a more quick to electric vehicles. Asked how to side with Trump this week, Doug Parks, GM’s executive vice president of global product development, procurement and supply chain, disappointingly echoed these claims by saying that “all GM wants is equal conditions “.
We’ve also heard new big model designs like these in the past. In October 2017, GM promised two new electric vehicles within 18 months and 20 new electric vehicles within five years. Currently, GM sells a battery electric vehicle in the United States, the Chevy Bolt, which it was selling even before that promise. It’s a great little car, but it falls short of the big promises we’ve heard. And it’s not the first time that GM has broken the promises of electric vehicles.
Even with a development timeline of 26 months, GM will have to rush to release 20 new EVs within (* check calendar *) 23 months from now. Also notably all of those vehicles draped in the featured photo of this article, which originally came from GM’s October 2017 announcement (37 months ago), are not yet available and most have not been shown publicly. The fact that we can take the same photo more than three years later and GM’s line of available models hasn’t changed at all is a pretty big indication that things are going slower than they should.
So, since it seems like we keep saying pretty much every time any carmaker announces something: great speech, now show us some action. Many of these EV pledges are already weaker than what we need as a planet to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and automakers continue to lose even the mild pledges they set for themselves. Even when the cars hit the road, GM will have to struggle to get its dealers to sell them, which remains a problem for most companies with franchised dealership models.
GM’s commitments today are stronger than most and reasonably impressive, but the company’s mixed history on electric vehicles, legal defense against emissions standards that will save lives and money, and the current state of its previous promises give us reason. to be skeptical. Show us the machines at the dealership, GM.
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