GM EV Plans Trigger Over 1,000 Job Cuts

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Sep 23, 7:02AM EDT · Published Sep 22, 8:54AM EDT

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GM EV Plans Trigger Over 1,000 Job Cuts — © Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

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General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM | GM Price Prediction) reportedly will cut hundreds of jobs to increase its bet on an EV-driven future.
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Slow electric vehicle (EV) sales were supposed to mean job cuts, as U.S. car companies have not entered the market successfully. However, General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) will temporarily cut hundreds of jobs to increase its bet on an EV-driven future.

According to Automotive News, America’s largest car company will lay off 1,625 workers at its Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas and stop producing the Chevy Malibu sedan. The $30,000 gas guzzler was first produced by GM in 1964. Chevy has sold about 10 million Malibus since then. Once it is gone, Chevy will no longer have any gasoline-drive sedan models, and its corporate gas-powered footprint will shrink considerably.

The Kansas plant will start producing Chevy’s Bolt EV. It was GM’s early move into the EV market. It was first made in 2016. GM planned to kill it in 2023 but will revive it in 2025.

The Bolt has a key attraction to GM management. Among the complaints about EVs is that they are expensive; most are priced over $40,000. The Bolt’s base price is closer to $28,000. The U.S. car companies are particularly worried that China’s EV manufacturers already make cars with price points below $25,000. So far, tariffs have kept these out of America.

GM faces a hurdle that other car companies that sell EVs in the United States also face. That means low EV prices may help consumers overcome their concerns about EV range, EV charging stations, and the fact that they cannot be fully charged in cold weather.

Ironically, GM is laying people off to make EVs. If GM views the move as a success, they may not be out of jobs for long.

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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.