Automotive: Companies losing billions on blind EV push

With signs of growing inventory and slowing sales, auto industry executives admitted this week that their ambitious electric vehicle plans are a failure.

Executives at some of the biggest carmakers this week voiced fresh unease about the electric car market’s growth as concerns over the viability of these vehicles put their multi-billion-dollar electrification strategies at risk.

Among the surprising hand-wringing is GM’s Mary Barra, historically one of the automotive industry’s most bullish CEOs on the future of electric vehicles. GM has been an early-mover in the electric car market, selling the Chevrolet Bolt for seven years and making bold claims about a fully electric future for the company long before their competitors got on board.

DUMB ASS AWARD – LOSING THEIR SHIRT ON EV SALES: General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra announces Tuesday, January 25, 2022 a GM investment of more than $7 billion in four Michigan manufacturing sites that includes building a new Ultium Cells battery cell plant in Lansing and converting the GM Orion Assembly plant to build full-size electric pickups. The investment will create 4,000 new jobs and retain 1,000. Barra made the announcement from the Senate Hearing Room of the Boji Tower in Lansing, Michigan. (Photo by Steve Fecht for General Motors)

But this week on GM’s third-quarter earnings call, Barra and GM struck a more sober tone. The company announced with its quarterly results that it’s abandoning its targets to build 100,000 EVs in the second half or this year and another 400,000 by the first six months of 2024. GM doesn’t know anymore when it will hit those targets.

“As we get further into the transformation to EV, it’s a bit bumpy,” she said. She believed the tree hugger lies and it is costing the company $ billions.