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GM To Idle Five Factories In North America, Cut More Than 14,000 Jobs As It Focuses On Autonomous, Electric Vehicles (chicagotribune.com) 379

Posted by BeauHD from the changing-markets dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Chicago Tribune: General Motors will cut up to 14,000 workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it abandons many of its car models and restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles. The reduction includes about 8,000 white-collar employees, or 15 percent of GM's North American white-collar workforce. Some will take buyouts while others will be laid off. Four factories in the U.S. and one in Canada could be shuttered by the end of 2019 if the automaker and its unions don't come up with an agreement to allocate more work to those facilities, GM said in a statement Monday. Another two will close outside North America. The company has marked a sedan plant in Detroit, a compact car plant in Ohio, and another assembly plant outside Toronto for possible closure. Also at risk are two transmission plants, one outside Detroit and another in Baltimore. GM CEO Mary Barra said the company is "still hiring people with expertise in software and electric and autonomous vehicles, and many of those who will lose their jobs are now working on conventional cars with internal combustion engines," reports Dallas News. "Barra said the industry is changing rapidly and moving toward electric propulsion, autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing, and GM must adjust with it."

The restructuring comes as the U.S. and North American auto markets are shifting away from cars toward SUVs and trucks. "In October, almost 65 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. were trucks or SUVs," reports Chicago Tribune. "It was about 50 percent cars just five years ago."
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GM To Idle Five Factories In North America, Cut More Than 14,000 Jobs As It Focuses On Autonomous, Electric Vehicles More

GM To Idle Five Factories In North America, Cut More Than 14,000 Jobs As It Focuses On Autonomous, Electric Vehicles

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  • Trump 2020! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Huge_UID ( 1089143 )
    I'm torn between feeling sorry for and laughing at the folks that voted for Trump because of his promises to keep factories open.

    • Re:Trump 2020! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26, 2018 @07:06PM (#57704608)

      I blame Trump for many things, but awful GM cars is not one of them. People aren't buying GM cars because they just are simply inferior to other brands. If you have money you buy Euro or Japanese. Those with less money are buying Korean.

    • Re: Trump 2020! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm still fully proud of my vote for Trump. I will vote for him every time he shows up on a ticket.

    • ehhh. That's not really a fair comparison. It's not like Hillary promised to keep US factories opened. The choice was between someone who wasn't going to do it, and someone who said he would do it but failed.

      I think the flaw is in voters who pick a President based on keeping car factories open. Globalization makes the automotive industry impossible for one person to control, outside of maybe the CEO of those automotive companies.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Electric vehicles, face, transmission, engine, fuel systems, factories all have to go, dead one, time to move on. To be replaced by electric motor factories and battery factories, but simpler production lines and more compact vehicles are becoming acceptable and of course electric vehicles are inherently more compact. Fewer models though, a general consolidation. With existing factories, it is often easier, to simply shut them done whilst building new elsewhere, although there is a legal spare parts problem

    • People voted for the Orange Roughy because they feared for their jobs; this just proves that their fears were well-founded.*

      Trump is the epitome of low hanging fruit; an easy target if there ever was one... and yet his myriad detractors continue to flail around in utter confusion, continually failing to get it.

    • "voted for Trump because of his promises to keep factories open"

      As opposed to Democrat promises to close every last remaining factory and ship all the machinery to China?

  • Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)

    by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @06:55PM (#57704528)
    Its due to falling sales. If they were successfully focusing on electric they'd still need production capacity. Note part of their 'focus on electric' involves cancelling the Volt, probably their best selling vehicle with electric as the primary power source.
    • This has nothing to do with electric. It has to do with the fact that no one is buying cars. Electric cars are a miniscule fraction of the total market.

      • Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @07:10PM (#57704630)

        At this time, probably. In the future, however, electric cars are a lot easier to build than conventional ones and need a lot fewer workers to build them, because they are much simpler mechanically.

        • Yeah, for sure. I have one myself.

      • Some kind of shit, definitely (Score:5, Interesting)

        by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @08:34PM (#57705108) Homepage Journal

        Electric car research is how you get investors excited and stock prices up. Perhaps some executives at GM are looking to cash out!

      • Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)

        by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @11:39PM (#57705772)
        Cars simply last longer now than they used to.

        I bought a BMW i3 (it's the cheapest car based on TCO in Norway right now by my calculation) and part of my purchasing decision was evaluating how it was built. With the exception of computers which are likely to fail because BMW is really bad at electronics, the physical build of the car should last about 30 years.

        I expect :
          - New tires every three years
          - New windshield wipers once a year
          - New brakes every three to five years
          - Refurbished battery once every 8-10 years (though newer batteries may last longer)
          - New motors every 15-20 years
          - New computers... not sure how often.

        This vehicle is built to last 30 years at substantially lower prices than replacing it. I will replace it when self-driving becomes a real option since I have no interest in driving.

        That said, here in Norway, we used to buy a lot of GM cars... now we don't. Now we buy primarily Tesla, BMW i series, Nissan Leafs, Kia electrics. In fact as of October this year, 45% of all new car sales in Norway are electric and we're also buying a bunch of fuel cell cars.

        We are ahead of the rest of the world on this because... well... we're western oil country and can afford it. It seems almost humorous that the massive amount of money we spent getting rid of internal combustion engine vehicles was paid for using oil money.

        But, you're absolutely right... car sales are on a massive decline.

        A few years back, I read an interview with the CEO of Ford at the time who said they need to learn to adapt to a market where instead of their biggest competition being other car companies, it was actually Apple. 18 year old American kids don't have the credit ratings needed to buy their own cars, after school jobs don't pay enough to buy one either. Kids these days would rather have an iPhone and either make their moms drive them or use Uber. They don't want to buy a brand new planet killing Mustang.

        I think the market has shifted quite a bit. I've seen more and more one-car households over the years. If kids buy vehicles, they get hoverboards or electric kick bikes. They simply don't need or want the cost or hassle of owning a car. And unlike back in the 80's when I was young, you can't buy a used car and fix it up yourself like we used to. Back then, all you needed to fix a car could fit into a toolbox you kept in the trunk. These days, aftermarket service manuals for cars are borderline useless.

        If GM shifts their business towards catering to large volume orders from companies like Uber who hope to run fleets of self driving taxis, it would make a great deal of sense.

        Now... if GM would make a yellow, self-driving, electric Camaro with racing stripes... I'll actually consider buying a GM vehicle. But I won't buy the fucking thing if they write the software. I simply don't trust car companies to know how to run programming teams.

        • There is a Model S that has done 400,000 miles in 3 years. It's had two battery replacements during that time (under warranty), but the maintenance cost for the vehicle is a fraction of the cost of an equivalent luxury sedan.

          One of those battery replacements was due to always charging to 100%.

          https://electrek.co/2018/07/17... [electrek.co]

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            That article illustrates why they brought in the reduced charge speed for heavy users. Something to watch for when buying second hand, because once it's active it can't be deactivated, and is a sign that the previous owner was pushing the vehicle hard.

    • Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)

      by toonces33 ( 841696 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @07:13PM (#57704646)

      The Volt was transitional. They are keeping the Bolt.

      • Which is stupid because the Volt's medium distance hybrid tech should have been baked into every single vehicle that Chevy and GM made. All of the benefits of electric commute with no range anxiety and a much cheaper battery pack. So of course they axe it.

        The ICE to battery transition period is going to stretch out into decades.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AvitarX ( 172628 )

          They're expensive though due to the complexity.

          And as time goes on long range electric vehicles will become cheaper while the PHEVs will remain expensive (since their cost comes more from complexity instead of battery pack).

          I'm sad to see the Volt go, but I doubt it had much life left in it going forward anyway, the market seems to show that a long range EV doesn't stress people out so much (I personally would prefer a Volt to a Model 3, but I'm not normal people it seems).

          • >And as time goes on long range electric vehicles will become cheaper

            To an extent. There hasn't been an "ah ha" breakthrough in battery storage in a while, at least not a commercially viable one, and the battery pack is one of the biggest expenses AND the limiting factor with public perception. There's a reason the Leaf and many others like the Hyundai Ioniq, the BMW i3, the Kia Soul EV, etc all have ranges of 150 miles or less, the battery pack's bulk, cost to produce and bottlenecks in the supply cha

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AvitarX ( 172628 )

              Fair enough, if demand keeps battery prices steady.

              I know my next car is going to be a PHEV, but that's because the Fusion is super cheap used, and would cut my trips to the gas station to about 25% of current (some of that being the fact that it gets great mileage).

    • That's really unfortunate, the volt is pretty damn cool idea for a power-train.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      Its due to falling sales.

      They are making a whole lot of money:
      https://www.nasdaq.com/earning... [nasdaq.com]

      while sales are doing OK
      http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm... [gmauthority.com]

      So it's probably not sales.

    • Like many things the auto industry does this is smart short-term, but likely disastrous long-term. If gas prices stay low nobody wants cars because trucks have lower gas mileage requirements. The second gas gets into the $3-4 range? Everybody will want to trade in that 19 MPG F-150 for a Volt, and they have no Volts to sell.

      They have a very long tradition of this. Frequently they're actually make this exact mistake. In the late 70s gas prices went up and everyone wanted Accords, but they had no Accord compe

  • Cars are dead (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 )
    People are buying SUVs and trucks. Most manufacturers are doing the same type of restructuring at this point.
    • People are buying lots of cars, just not from US companies. Subaru, Toyota, Honda, BMW, Audi...
      • Nope. Those are all declining in sales too.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by HornWumpus ( 783565 )

      CAFE requirements killed them. Nobody wants a 50 mpg car, they suck, no fun. But rules lawyers to the rescue.

      • My Prius Hybrid is fun to drive and I get 54 MPG city and highway. It's not an SUV but a hatchback, which seem to be popular these days. Toyota also has the Rav 4, a small SUV, that comes as a hybrid, but not sure its MPG.

        • Being Devil's Advocate for a moment... you might get 54mpg "average" when driving under mixed urban-suburban typical daily conditions, but what kind of mileage would you SPECIFICALLY see on days 2 and 3 of a drive from Miami to Los Angeles where you spent basically 100% of your driving time on an interstate doing 80mph... the kind of drive that's long enough to deplete the Prius' batteries, without really giving them a good opportunity to recharge (because the engine is running at full efficiency keeping th

    • Most SUVs are just cars with the unibody frame shaped like a bus, otherwise known as station wagons.. but ssh don't tell anyone they drive a station wagon or they will throw a fit. It makes sense really, why have a car with limited cargo space when you can make that car with cargo space for almost the same manufacturing cost and sell it at a higher price.

    • > People are buying SUVs and trucks

      Well... until the next recession hits anyway. Then people will buy cheap foreign cars that get 30+ mpg because they can't afford to pay for SUV levels of efficiency.

    • SUVs Are Cheating? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kackle ( 910159 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @08:39PM (#57705122)
      Or as I like to call them, "tall station wagons".

      Does anyone know whether SUVs are exempted from the gas mileage requirements? If so, then that means they can "unfairly" be "better" than cars, in the eyes of the consumers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mentil ( 1748130 )

        They are held to lesser gas mileage requirements, yes, and that's thought to be one of the major reasons SUVs were promoted in the first place. 'Powerful' is easier to market than 'utilitarian'.

    • Somehow Tesla manages to sell cars.

    • The problem isn't that people aren't buying passenger cars per se, the problem is that SUVs and trucks are the only market where American carmakers can profitably compete against foreign competitors. In countries where "normal" people drive tiny econoboxes, an American F350 pickup truck or a Cadillac Escalade has EXACTLY the same kind of prestige and brand image that a BMW or Lexus does in the US.

      This is the exact problem Chrysler ran up against ~10 years ago when Daimler owned them. Within a few years, Dai

    • Basically, anything that has a trunk can't sell. Nobody is selling them. The Honda accord isn't even selling. Even AWD cars aren't selling, so it's not the Crossover/SUV fad driving down car sales.

      Simply put, No one wants to deal with the tiny trunk that a coupe or sedan has when a hatchback has a ton more cargo space, Especially when the rear seats are folded down. The writing's been on the wall for years too. Ten years ago everybody wanted either a crossover or a small stationwagon. GM knew this when they

  • is a big factor. They're building more cars then they can sell in 7-9 months. They could run the factories longer but then they'd have to cut the price on their cars more than it's worth.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hwihyw ( 4763935 )

      RTFA - "GM is shedding cars largely because it doesn't make money on them, Citi analyst Itay Michaeli wrote in a note to investors."We estimate sedans operate at a significant loss, hence the need for classic restructuring,"

      • it's not exactly rocket science to retool a factory in 2018. Or put another way, why don't they have to retool the factories to keep up with demand? They're cutting 15,000 jobs. If they were just shifting product lines there'd be no job losses.

        You won't see a lot of talk about jobs being automated away though because, well, the folks running the pro-corporate media aren't allowed to cover those stories too often; if at all. They're all owned by the same folks (everybody sits on everybody else's board of
        • Electric car sales in the US have just 1.1% market share. Saying you're laying off due to electric cars is a red herring. There is currently zero market in the US for autonomous cars, so any discussion about them is premature.
          As far as automation - they already tried and failed..... Saturn was a GM company. "Saturn, A new kind of car, a new kind of company", was the slogan. Saturn had highly automated plants, and it still failed.
          If you're not selling capacity, you cut capacity - business 101. US Au

          • Post bankruptcy/bailout GM exists to serve it's pension funds. Stockholders effectively own shares in a non-profit.

        • At one time, GM was the world's largest manufacturer of industrial robots. Not sure if that's true today. When I moved to the Detroit area in 1971, there were something like 1.8 million auto assembly line workers. When I left in 1982 there were something like 800,000. Today it's about 400,000 and they're making more vehicles than ever. Some of these workers are with the aerospace and agricultural equipment manufacturers. Continued automation will kill auto maker jobs regardless of what type of vehicle is m

  • Thanks, Trump! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @07:05PM (#57704602)
    Steel and aluminum tariffs couldn't possibly affect GM profitability, now could they?

  • They've come out already and told the Canadian governments and union that the plant in Canada that is mentioned in this story will be closing down next year no matter what.

    Though the union thinks it's going to stop the closure [www.cbc.ca].

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by LostOne ( 51301 )

      Yeah, I don't get what legal theory the union thinks they can use to prevent the plant closure. Nothing in Canadian law requires a company to continue unprofitable operations. And even if it did, it's still not going to happen unless someone pays for it.

      Quite frankly, the union can STFU. They should be talking to GM about what happens to their members, not the media. And the various levels of government shouldn't be doing anything about this either beyond the already existing social programs available to ev

  • Hopefully, Tesla will buy a plant (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @08:05PM (#57704960) Journal
    Seriously, like NUMMA, it would be useful to buy one of these plants with equipment that works. They could get MY, Semi, and perhaps Roadster up quickly. Nevada is supposed to gear up to 105 GW worth of Li-ion batteries.

  • This is how companies die ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @08:30PM (#57705092) Homepage

    This is an example of how companies die, often a slow and protracted death ...

    GM (and Ford) say: people are not buying sedans, so we will be focusing on autonomous cars that are rented, ...etc.

    Meanwhile, Tesla is making a killing selling sedans, and there is a long waiting list for its cars!

    GM, Ford and Chrysler have the plants that can produce the majority of what goes into a car: chassis, assembly line, ...etc. An electric motor is not a big deal to make. Batteries are the challenge, but there are Japanese companies willing to sell them.

    The conventional car companies are like BlackBerry a decade ago: they saw Apple launch the iPhone in 2007 and ignored it. They said no one wants touch screen, everyone wants a 5 day batter, everyone wants a keyboard, ...etc. Then they watched Google do the exact same thing in 2008, and ignored it. They were complacent, they were arrogant, they were incompetent.

    Same thing happens in the auto sector now ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      Isn't that the opposite of what GM is doing here?

      Sure, the car part I guess, but they appear to be shifting hard towards electric, right?

      Seems to me they are trying real hard to not be Kodak (we'll see if it works).

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kbahey ( 102895 )

        We have been hearing about them embracing electric for years. There is even the Chevy Bolt, which someone who works there says it is an electric that predates the Tesla.

        But in the small city that I live (~ 300,000 in a twin city, around ~ 500,000 with a third city), I see many Teslas, belonging to at least 3 models! Compare that to me not seeing a single Bolt, although it has been officially available in Canada since the start of 2017. This is from a company that has a very high price and a long waiting lis

  • After developing/killing the EV1 I love the irony (Score:5, Informative)

    by Biogoly ( 2026888 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @09:39PM (#57705384)
    GM invested millions of dollars into the EV1 program for their electric car in the 90s. They were positioned to be a global leader in EV technology...until those far sighted C-Suite geniuses at GM killed it.

  • How GM pursues Electric cars... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday November 26, 2018 @10:12PM (#57705472) Journal
    It went after the electric cars in 1999. It took back every EV1 it leased to the customers, who begged and pleaded to keep them. With dogged determination it went after the electric cars, took back every last one of them and crushed it in the junk yard. Hobbyists and users were rebuffed.

    That is how GM pursues electric cars.

    • The EV1 project was cancelled because the EV1 wasn't very good. The later version had a 25 kWh NiMH battery pack for 100-140 miles of range when new, only 2 seats. The technology wasn't ready for widespread adoption at the time.

      Waiting until the next generation of battery tech had matured (Li-ion) was the right call to make. Put the EV1 next to a Tesla model S and the EV1 looks like a T-Ford.

      Allowing the cars to remain in circulation would have been a drain on resources and a potential PR nightmare as the b

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