GM shows 13 electric vehicles as it tries to run with Tesla

Friday, 6 March 2020

General Motors, trying to refashion itself as a futuristic company with technology to compete against Tesla, has rolled out plans for 13 new electric vehicles during the next five years.

The company touted an exclusive new battery technology that could propel some of the vehicles more than 600 kilometres on a single charge as it tries to capture electric vehicle enthusiasm that has brought wild growth to rival Tesla's share price.

At an event for investors, dealers and media at its sprawling technical centre in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Michigan, GM executives said the new vehicles would be built using modular chassis and drive systems for manufacturing simplicity.

GM will be able to build trucks, cars, SUVs and even an autonomous shuttle based on the new systems, the company said.

General Motors' new modular electric platform will first appear under a new Cadillac SUV.

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GM says its EV powertrain will be much cheaper and simpler to build, reducing manufacturing costs.

The global vehicles will include affordable transportation, work trucks, luxury SUVs and performance vehicles. CEO Mary Barra said GM will be able to build at a large scale, similar to its profitable full-size truck business.

'We want to put everyone in an EV, and we have what it takes to do it,'' she said at a presentation for investors.

GM will build EVs at a large scale, similar to its profitable full-size truck business, according to CEO Mary Barra.

Some of the new vehicles will be able to go from zero to 100kmhin as little as three seconds - performance that rivals electric vehicle sales leader Tesla.

New all-electric models will come from the Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick brands starting this year, beginning with the Cadillac Lyriq luxury SUV to be unveiled in April.

A new Chevrolet Bolt small SUV comes in the middle of 2021. There's also the GMC Hummer EV pickup coming to dealers in late 2021.

GM plans just 19 different electric powertrain combinations, compared with 550 ICE powertrains it has now.

GM also has plans for three more Cadillac SUVs, a midsize Chevrolet SUV, two Buick SUVs, a GMC Hummer SUV, a Chevrolet full-size pickup with 660km of range, a luxury Cadillac car and the Cruise Origin, an autonomous electric shuttle.

With fewer parts than petrol-powered vehicles, electric vehicles will be much cheaper and simpler to build, reducing manufacturing costs, GM said. The company plans 19 different battery and electric motor and transmission combinations, compared with 550 internal combustion powertrain combinations available today.

The company said a joint venture with Korean battery maker LG Chem will use a low-cobalt chemistry to drive down battery costs to below US$100 per kilowatt hour.

GM President Mark Reuss said that 'thousands of GM scientists, engineers and designers are working to execute an historic reinvention of the company.'

Executives told the group that the next generation of GM's electric vehicles will be profitable.

Barra said the new vehicles can increase sales and market share, and the batteries and drive units could be licensed to other companies to bring in more revenue.

She said the company plans to sell more than 1 million electric vehicles in North America and China by the middle of the decade. To get there, GM will spend more than US$20 billion developing the vehicles through 2025, she said.

Electric vehicle sales will have to grow substantially both worldwide and in the U.S. for GM to meet its targets. Last year manufacturers sold just over 236,000 fully electric vehicles in the U.S., about 1.4 per cent of total new vehicle sales, according to Autodata Corp.

GM is making a huge investment ahead of consumer demand, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of the consulting firm LMC Automotive.

'They're going to need to weather that, not only with investors, but just from an overall financial standpoint,' he said.

LMC expects automakers to sell 17 million fully electric vehicles by 2030, or about 16 per cent of worldwide demand. It will be 25 per cent to 30 per cent of the market in Europe, 20 per cent in China and 8 per cent in the U.S., LMC estimated. Those numbers are smaller than what GM is predicting, but Schuster said sales could rise because GM has such a wide range of vehicles to offer.

'In order to have breakthroughs, you have to have investments,' he said. 'It's going to bear fruit. It's just a question of how long it's going to take. That's unknown at this stage.'