GM’s EV Disaster

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 18, 10:05AM EDT

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General Motors recently said it would slow its electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing expansion. Ford recently said the same thing. GM specified that it would cut back on the expansion of its electric trucks. Pickups are the largest category of vehicles, based on sales in America, and GM’s Chevy Silverado is among them. The way GM described the move is that EVs are in a period of “evolving demand.” That means few people want them. (Customers are abandoning these 25 brands.)

The announcements are a pattern, since Ford and GM are America’s largest car companies. The demand for EVs in the United States has slowed in general. There are several reasons for this. One is that people worry about how far EVs will go on a single charge. They worry that they cannot find a charging station. And they feel it takes too long to charge EVs. To fill a tank of gasoline takes minutes.

EVs are also going through a period of price reductions. Tesla has dropped the prices of several of its models more than once. Outsiders expect this to increase demand. If so, it makes it more difficult for GM to catch the number one EV company in the United States by far.
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Tesla is expected to hit the market with its truck this year. Called the Cybertruck, it will compete with other electric pickups. Tesla says it has two years of backorders. That may not matter much, since many of those people will not actually buy one.
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GM has lost billions of dollars moving into the EV sector, as has Ford. They currently face a UAW strike, which could create a loss of several more billion for GM. The company will return to EV production fiscally damaged and without many customers.

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.