GM’s (GM) Future May Ride On Two Wheels And Not Four

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 27, 10:18PM EDT · Published Apr 7, 5:15AM EDT

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GM’s (GM) domestic car sales are off almost 50% this year, so selling cars is no longer the company’s strength. Since it is an auto firm, coming up with an alternative business would seem to be impossible, but the No.1 US car company is giving it a stab.

GM and motor scooter company Segway are going to begin to market a two-wheel urban cruiser which may sell well enough to bring GM some meaningful revenue in its home market.

According to the AP, “The companies announced Tuesday that they are working together to develop a two-wheeled, two-seat electric vehicle designed to be a fast, safe, inexpensive and clean alternative to traditional cars and trucks for cities across the world.” The little “cars” will also be able to communicate with one another electronically to prevent traffic tie ups.

Experts and investors have been certain that GM lost its capacity for innovation many years ago and that the firm would eventually destroy itself by its reliance on heavy and large fossil-fuel cars and trucks. The Segway news is an indication that someone at GM is actually looking for a way out of the woods.

For once, something conceived of by GM may work.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.