General Motors CEO Mary Barra says the Detroit automaker is “absolutely” capable of catching Tesla’s EV market share in the United States by 2025.
The GM CEO said the company’s expanding lineup of electric vehicles would help it accelerate its sales and ultimately catch Tesla’s dominating sales figures for the U.S. market. With the GMC Hummer EV, Cadillac Lyriq, and the most affordable versions of the Chevrolet Bolt set to be released, GM also plans to have at least 30 EVs in its lineup by 2025. However, a report from Reuters stated that GM plans to expand its EV lineup to 20 by 2028.
GM certainly has the production capacity to make a run at being a successful electric vehicle company, and the progress the automaker has made gives Barra hope that it can catch up to Tesla. “I am very comfortable because when people get into these vehicles, they are just wowed,” Barra said to CNBC. “So we will be rolling them out, and we’re going to just keep working until we have number one market share in EVs.”
Tesla is expected to own 56% of the total EV market share in the United States so far in 2021, according to a study from IHS Markit. In previous years, it was as high as 79%, but the expansion of EVs and incoming competition has slightly taken away from Tesla’s market share. The company is still expanding its production lines and manufacturing footprint, however, and has reported an increase in deliveries every quarter since Q1 2019, when deliveries in Q4 2018 were higher than the following quarter.
GM has had a tumultuous 2021 so far. After recalls of the Chevrolet Bolt EV due to spontaneous battery fires caused $1.8 billion in expenditures from the automaker to solve the problem, GM is still working out the kinks to its most popular vehicle. While battery production for the Bolt has resumed, GM has not indicated if the Bolt itself has resumed production. GM spokesman Daniel Flores said in September, “We will not resume repairs or restart production until we are confident LG is producing defect-free products for us.”
GM has definitely put their money where their mouth is, committing several billion dollars to EV development and battery research and production. On October 5th, the company announced the Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center, an “all-new facility that will significantly expand the company’s battery technology operations and accelerate development and commercialization of longer range, more affordable electric vehicle batteries.”
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