GM To Invest More Than $2 Billion In US Manufacturing To Increase Electric Vehicle Production (cnbc.com) 67
General Motors is investing about $2.2 billion in its U.S. manufacturing operations, largely to increase production of electric vehicles, the company announced Tuesday. CNBC reports: The investment is the latest for the Detroit automaker as it pivots toward EVs under GM CEO Mary Barra's "triple zero" vision of zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion -- an overarching goal for the company. Since March 2019, GM has committed to invest more than $4.5 billion in three U.S. manufacturing sites to prepare for EV-related production. The company has previously said it plans to release at least 20 new electric vehicles globally by 2023, including the upcoming GMC Hummer EV, which will be unveiled Tuesday night.
The $2.2 billion in new investments will occur in the coming years, according to the company. Roughly $2 billion of that money will go toward a plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, for production of future electric vehicles, including the recently unveiled Cadillac Lyriq crossover. Renovation work at the facility, which will be GM's third in the U.S. to produce EVs, will begin immediately, according to the automaker.
In connection with the announcement, GM will eventually move production of the GMC Acadia from the Tennessee plant to a facility in mid-Michigan. The company said it will invest more than $100 million at the Lansing Delta Township plant for assembly of the next-generation Acadia crossover at an undisclosed time. Separately from EVs, GM on Tuesday also announced new investments of roughly $53.3 million at four plants in Michigan to increase production of its heavy-duty pickup trucks, self-driving Cruise AV test vehicles and 10-speed transmissions.
The $2.2 billion in new investments will occur in the coming years, according to the company. Roughly $2 billion of that money will go toward a plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, for production of future electric vehicles, including the recently unveiled Cadillac Lyriq crossover. Renovation work at the facility, which will be GM's third in the U.S. to produce EVs, will begin immediately, according to the automaker.
In connection with the announcement, GM will eventually move production of the GMC Acadia from the Tennessee plant to a facility in mid-Michigan. The company said it will invest more than $100 million at the Lansing Delta Township plant for assembly of the next-generation Acadia crossover at an undisclosed time. Separately from EVs, GM on Tuesday also announced new investments of roughly $53.3 million at four plants in Michigan to increase production of its heavy-duty pickup trucks, self-driving Cruise AV test vehicles and 10-speed transmissions.
'Zero crashes' (Score:2)
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The investment is to pay for the abandonment fossil fueller elements of the production line. They smartly outsourced much of the fossil fueller element of their cars. The end of fossil fuel vehicles in the metropolitan area.
Keep in mind GM, like Ford was a big investor into oil and hence no incentive for real fuel economy, this change means they have dumped their fossil fuel investments finally and it is all over for the gas guzzlers.
Demand, you carry on like their will be a choice, eventually and not tha
Oh Jesus Christ I hope not (Score:2)
Dishwashers evidence Orange Man bad? (Score:2)
I will grant the article, however, that Mr. Trump's claim that dishwashers are about women is nonsense. Dishwashers are about men.
Men load the dishes into dishwashers. Aspie, geek, On-the-Spectrum men. They know what every rack, every tine is for, and every time they load the dishes they think they will be awarded a Fields Medal for cracking an unsolved optimization problem.
That said, Aspie, geek, On-the-Spectrum men know all about dishwashers. They love their dishwasher more than they love their w
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The way I see it, clean air is a side benefit to reducing climate changing emissions, which EVs can help with. The thing is, once the batteries have come down in price a little more, you won't need to ban ICE vehicles, the market will switch. Everything about EVs are better already, with a few (admittedly important) caveats - up front costs and range, which both are addressed by lower battery prices, and access to charging. With ~75% of US households in single family houses, access to charging is fairly eas
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Just turn your stereos up louder. Or carry an extra gun or two.
Re: 'Zero crashes' (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want clean air, then don't live in a city center. And you'll soon find out why electric cars are a nonstarter for people who live in big boy houses and need big boy vehicles so that soyboys like you can live in cities and preven about how green you are.
Guess what? Both can coexist.
(For a while ... but EV will definitely replace ICE in the long run. Eventually you'll wonder how you ever put up with all those long drives out of your way just to fill up messy liquid hydrocarbons when you can simply plug it in at night)
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What do you think you'll accomplish by jumping in your car to handle an emergency? Call 911 already.
Oh, you didn't actually mean emergency, you just meant an abrupt reason for departure. Because if the trip is so long that an EV doesn't have enough range to get you there, it's far enough away that you can't possibly get there soon enough to do anything about an actual emergency, not just something like "black people are voting" or "antifa is allegedly punching n@z!s"
Re: 'Zero crashes' (Score:1)
Re: 'Zero crashes' (Score:1)
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Eventually you'll wonder how you ever put up with all those long drives out of your way just to fill up messy liquid hydrocarbons when you can simply plug it in at night)
I never go out of my way for gas. There are so many stations that there is virtually always one "on the way".
I'd be surprised if this is not the norm.
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What right do you claim to burn and pollute the air people breathe when there is an alternate choice,
So why are you polluting? After all, you're using a message board and internet that almost certainly runs in part on coal. Hypocrite.
NONE! What right do those people have to breathe clean air, every fucking right!
So, go out into the country and get your clean air. You don't get to move into the CBD and complain about too many shops, do you?
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This line of argument is right up there with "and Hitler was a vegetarian". The notion that one shouldn't do anything because it's impossible to do everything is both risible and a wimp's argument. What kind of unmanly right wing dickhead are you that believes in giving up on making things better just because it's hard?
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Keep in mind GM, like Ford was a big investor into oil and hence no incentive for real fuel economy, this change means they have dumped their fossil fuel investments finally and it is all over for the gas guzzlers.
Ford sells 3 times as many F-150s alone as Tesla sells vehicles in total. Does Ford need to join the EV game? Sure, everyone is gonna. Is it an imminent crisis, probably not.
Do not buy a fossil fueller any more the resale will be absolutely awful.
I'd mod you funny if I had not already posted.
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Government Motors better not be asking for no more bailouts...
I'd prefer it if the auto makers asked for "no more bailouts".
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Re:'Zero crashes' (Score:4, Interesting)
Go read what Alcoa did on worker safety in the late 80s and early 90s. Setting the highest of bars for safety drove massive improvements in income and profitability, and while perfect safety is never achieved, orders of magnitude improvements are feasible.
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Go read what Alcoa did on worker safety in the late 80s and early 90s. Setting the highest of bars for safety drove massive improvements in income and profitability, and while perfect safety is never achieved, orders of magnitude improvements are feasible.
Making the workplace safer is easy when the best way to make the workplace safer is to get rid of more workers and replace them with automation.
You claim it was the desire for safety they wanted and that they accidentally fell into the higher profitability of automation.
I claim it was the desire for the higher profits of automation that they wanted and that they accidentally fell into a safer workplace.
Seems to me that since most of the time "its the money, stupid" that you need some evidence, because
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I suggested reading about what Alcoa did. Had you done so, you'd have learned that Alcoa didn't improve worker safety through automation. And what they did certainly wasn't easy. Others struggled to copy it.
Things are looking up. (Score:5, Funny)
I am still waiting for GM to eat Tesla's lunch. As foretold and promised right here so many times.
Still, if GM makes any good headway on this and Tesla starts feeling the heat I suppose Tesla could just acquire them. They have the market cap for it.
Re:Things are looking up. (Score:4, Funny)
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Of course, GM had that shit down pat in the 70s.
But unlike Tesla, GM and the other incumbents have made money selling cars. My guess is that they would prefer to make electric cars that sell at a loss, rather continue to pay Tesla the emissions credits that have kept the upstart afloat (and even profitable) for the last couple years.
I don't know if that will help them in the long run. Maybe being a car company that knows nothing is better than being a car company that knows the wrong things.
Re:Things are looking up. (Score:4, Informative)
> But unlike Tesla, GM and the other incumbents have made money selling cars.
Tesla makes tons of money selling cars. Literally tens of billions in revenue. (Regulatory credits accounted for $594 million worth of income in 2019. Their gross income for that year was $24.6 billion... so regulatory credits accounted for only 2.4% of gross income.)
It just so happens that they are spending a lot on physical assets and growth, because Tesla has a goal and the only way to reach that goal is to grow as quickly as possible. The debt is temporary, and fairly trivial in the long term.
To think that just because they post little or no net profit quarter to quarter it must be because they're not making any money is just about the stupidest conclusion you could make. If you're one of Tesla's competitors, it would be an absolutely fatal mistake.
=Smidge= /But by all means, keep shorting TSLA you fucking morons...
Re:Things are looking up. (Score:4, Insightful)
It just so happens that they are spending a lot on physical assets and growth
Yep, and any business in the same position as Tesla's that didnt sink every damn penny it could into growth is run by a fool. Not just all the revenue dumped back in, but also borrowing even more money too, and thats exactly what Tesla is doing.
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Re:Things are looking up. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am still waiting for GM to eat Tesla's lunch.
If you are a US taxpayer, GM is eating your future lunch right now.
Of $2 Billion "investment", $1 Billion will go to stock buybacks to pump up the stock options of GM executivea.
Another $1 Billion will go directly for executive bonuses to retain "top talent needed for Electric Vehicles".
In two years or so, GM will go bankrupt again, but will be "too big to fail". They will take EVs this time to Washington, instead of a private jet, but demand that they get bailed out in the Emperor's Nude Green Deal.
Hey, I will do GM execs a favor. For their trip to Washington, I will loan them my LEGO EV3!
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...as long as the back of car doesn't come off when it hits a puddle, they'll be in good shape.
Bring on the EVs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bring on the EVs (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think we need fast charging infrastructure. We just need charging infrastructure.
Rolling out even a slow 1.5kW charge point to places where people work and live universally would reduce the need for a fast charger, as most vehicles spend the majority of their time in these two locations.
1.5kW is just a 110V 15A outlet, which charges EVs at around 3-5 MPH or so, so if the car spends 22 hours a day at either location, it will recharge anywhere from 60 to 100 miles, enough for the vast majority of commutes.
In Europe, where they have 220V 13A power, the car charges twice as much.
The benefit is that a regular power socket doesn't actually take much infrastructure to add - you don't need extra thick cables or a huge increase in electrical service requirements.
Once you have that, people will want to drive further and do road trips, and then they'll demand fast chargers which are appropriate there, but you don't need vast arrays of it.
It's a far easier ask to get people to install 1.5kW charge points than demand installation of 18/30/70kW chargers.The need for bulk charging is lessened when the common use case can be handled with a standard low power charger as long as it's available everywhere (apartments and office parking lots) and everyone can charge at both ends. Plus, 1.5kW is trivial to blanket a whole parking lot versus just having 5-10 high power spaces.
Owning an EV is less about fuelling up, and more about charging opportunistically. IF the car is going to sit for hours, it should be charging even at 1.5kW. Fast charging is only required fi the car is going to be idle for a short period of time and operated for extended ranges, so trips to the store don't need it, but road trips do.
Especially since many fast chargers are time-limited - once you're charged, you have to move the vehicle to let others charge, so having a "park all day" spot that charges slower is probably something people would prefer.
How much will go to CHina? (Score:5, Insightful)
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What happened with your "mask and sanitizer proof covid strain" WindBourne? Here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org]
Just can't help lying about everything can you.
Why make up such obvious nonsense?
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That's the astonishing thing about your beautiful country.
The 'silent majority' screech "OMG, socialism!" whenever world-class taxpayer funded education or health is ever mentioned.
Yet there's a bottomless pit of money for Wall St bailouts.
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USA: Socialism for corporations; free enterprise for the poor.
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I find it amazing that GOP and conservatives on SCOTUS have pushed that Corp are for producing profits. If so, they should be subject to a lot more regulations/laws than a real human citizen. Yet, the same far right fascists scream that corps basically have the same rights, just none of the responsibilities.
Amazing. Just fucking amazing. Hopefully, Biden will stack SCOTUS.
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Just because she claims that they will invest 2B into EVs, does not mean in the west.
I'm guessing that it will mean into her own pocket. And her cronies pockets.
When GM fails again . . . the rescue money will come out of US taxpayers' pockets.
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I am guessing that we WILL have to bail them and ford out, just like Europe is going to bail out most of their LICE makers.
However, what we really need to do, is break them up. If we take GM/Ford and break them up along the lines of brands, I think that we avoid having to deal with this again. And competition is a good thing.
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Breaking up Ford and GM is a good way to guarantee they'll never be competitive again. The automakers are consolidating because the investment required to develop a new car (let alone a new type of drivetrain) is in the billions these days, and you need a massive volume of sales to be able to afford it.
Re: How much will go to CHina? (Score:2)
Nikola money (Score:1, Insightful)
Now that GM is not going to invest money in failed fraudulent startup Nikola, they're ready to do it themselves.
If you've not been following the story
- Nikola was going to have a semi powered by alternative fuels. In their demo they ran the semi down a shallow hill with no engine.
- Nikola said "No wait wait we'll have this really cool pickup truck" but then their CEO said "Nagh, we won't do that."
- GM was all set to invest by end of September, but "that didn't happen."
These are documented in so many places
There success will depend on the dealer network (Score:2)
Assuming GM can even build a decent vehicle...
They could consider creating a new brand for their e-vehicles. Their current dealer network will have trouble moving paradigm-shifting vehicles because it will always be easier to point people at the bigger pool of ICE vehicles on the lot and because they know them better. E-vehicles will have fewer, cheaper service visits which will also create tension inside the dealerships.
Sadly cancelled the Volt (Score:5, Insightful)
I own one of the last 2019 Chevy Volts and am still a bit miffed that GM cancelled it. It's a really great car. I owned the previous model, a 2013 and got many many years of reliable use. It was my mostly EV car except when I needed to go long distances.
Reasons the Volt was cancelled (Score:3)
Curious about the Volt cancellation you mentioned, here is what Wikipedia had to say:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"In 2018, General Motors decided to end production in March 2019. The primary reason given was that the Volt is a sedan, and sales of four-door vehicles were in decline. Car salesmen were proving resistant to selling the car because it was more complicated (and thus took more of their time) to explain how the vehicle operated. Marketing trends showed that sales of hybrids were dropping as mo
Kicking and screaming (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm Optimistic (Score:1)
The Bolt is well reviewed and is known as a solid little car.
I'm surprised they didn't pursue a prestige EV up to this point, which is more of what the Tesla is, even though they are trying to step down on the Model 3.