Profits will remain steady, electric vehicle sales will improve, demand for internal combustion engine, ICE, vehicles is still strong, and, oh yeah, that Ultium battery brand we spent a mint promoting, is going away.
Those were all messages delivered by General Motors Co. chair and CEO Mary Barra along with other top executives Tuesday at GM’s Spring Hill, Tenn. plant in a room packed with investment analysts who can affect the fate of a company’s share price by the guidance they give to their clients and news media.
While not offering specific guidance for 2025, during her Investors Day presentation Barra said she expected the company’s financial performance next year will be “in a similar range” to 2024.
GM, like some of its competition, is caught between the desire to increase its portfolio to battery electric vehicles which remain a slim segment of the retail market and the need to continue developing and producing more popular ICE vehicles, especially high-profit full-size pickups and SUVs which bankroll those EV dreams.
“We expect the ICE industry is going to have a long tail, and it’s going to be a significant part of our future,” said GM chief financial officer Paul Jacobson. “We’re still investing approximately one-third of our total capital budget on key ICE improvements.”
GM expects to produce and wholesale 200,000 EVs in North America this year, Barra said, adding, “we continue to expect our EV portfolio to reach positive variable profit this quarter, based on our current trajectory. This inflection point in EV profitability is arriving much faster than many people thought.”
The company’s EV gambit is producing models across price ranges, from the luxury Cadillac brand to the return of the entry-level Chevrolet Bolt in 2026 that GM president Mark Reuss said, “will be a money maker for us.”
The reincarnated Bolt will contain the latest technology and fast charging and be priced “only slightly higher than the 2023 bolt, which started at $28,795,” Reuss said.
While other automakers are turning to mild and plug-in hybrids as possible stepping stones for EV-shy customers, Reuss said “we’re not missing anything right now without P-hevs or mild hybrids in our lineup. To be clear, P-hevs represent just 2% of the total U.S. sales, and we believe the breadth, depth and excellence of our EV and ICE portfolio offers more choices and better choices than the P-hevs and mild hybrids out there.”
It was only about four years ago GM unveiled the Ultium EV battery platform with great fanfare. The modular battery/drive concept was designed as a sort of one-size-fits all solution to power a wide variety of EVs.
Ultium, we hardly knew ye.
Buried in his presentation, Kurt Kelty, GM vice president battery cell, revealed the Ultium brand is being “sunset,” but not without both giving it its due and explaining the rationale.
“Without this common building block, we couldn’t have launched the wide range of all new EV models that we have today,” Kelty explained. “Having established a strong presence in the EV market across categories and prices, we can now take the next step on a journey with sufficient volume and key segments now makes business sense to transition from one size fits all to new program specific batteries.”
To do so GM is looking at various battery chemistries to better match power and performance demands to individual vehicles, Kelty said.
In addition, he announced GM will build a battery prototyping center at its Warren, Michigan technical center to open in 2027. Kelty said the new facility could reduce battery development times by “up to a year.”
So it was optimism all around for the benefit of notoriously skeptical investment analysts who are all too aware of their influence.
Indeed, if there was any doubt GM’s EV strategy is a smart play, Barra offered hope by declaring, “we believe our EV losses peak this year, and we’re focused on significantly improving profitability next year.”
