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General Motors (GM) announced Friday it is is laying off some 1,000 workers worldwide, cutting costs as it tries to compete in a crowded global automobile market. The GM workers impacted, mostly white collar, were told early in the morning as they prepared for the weekend. The company confirmed the layoffs in a statement but gave few details, AP reports. The move comes on the back of a recent GM recall for 450,000 vehicles due to a fault in the braking system. “We need to optimize for speed and excellence,” the statement said. “This includes operating with efficiency, ensuring we...

General Motors CEO Mary Barra is still committing to taking the automaker fully electric by 2035, even as third-quarter earnings show Electric Vehicles (EVs) are still not profitable. “That is the plan we’re still executing,” Barra told the New York Times of GM’s plans to fully transition to EVs by 2035 regardless of who is in the White House. Barra first made the commitment in 2021 after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office. The commitment, though, has not made EVs any more profitable.

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~snip~ The details behind the new fuel cell The new fuel cell uses stainless steel in place of platinum and rare metals. Johanna Wellington, advanced technology leader at General Electric Global Research and the head of General Electric's fuel cell business, states: "The cost challenges associated with the technology have stumped a lot of people for a long time. But we made it work, and we made it work economically. It's a game-changer. The new fuel cell can generate electricity at any location with a supply of natural gas. It can get going quickly, does not need new transmission lines...

American automakers will need to make major changes to their businesses if they want to remain competitive with Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) poised to flood the global market, according to analysis published by auto industry consultants. U.S. manufacturers currently do tens of billions of dollars of business abroad, but Chinese competitors are poised to take over approximately one-third of the global market share by 2030 with particularly strong growth in Europe, South America and Asia driven by EVs and plug-in hybrids, AlixPartners projects in its report. The auto market is evolving to favor EVs thanks in part to the policy...

General Motors is trimming its expected sales and production of all-electric vehicles this year, as U.S. adoption of EVs occurs slower than expected. GM Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said the company now expects production of 200,000 to 250,000 EVs this year, down from a previously announced range of 200,000 to 300,000. ... Jacobson said GM expects EVs to make up 8% of U.S. sales industrywide this year. That’s lower than many other auto analyst forecasts, which expect EVs to represent around 10% of industry sales in 2024.

G.M. had provided information about braking, acceleration and speed to LexisNexis Risk Solution and Verisk, firms that generated driver risk profiles for insurers... General Motors said Friday that it had stopped sharing details about how people drove its cars with two data brokers that created risk profiles for the insurance industry. The decision followed a New York Times report this month that G.M. had, for years, been sharing data about drivers’ mileage, braking, acceleration and speed with the insurance industry. The drivers were enrolled — some unknowingly, they said — in OnStar Smart Driver, a feature in G.M.’s internet-connected cars...

Michigan autoworkers are worried that President Joe Biden’s policies pushing for a transition to electric vehicles (EV) will cost their jobs, according to The New York Times. Some autoworkers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union are not pleased with the president’s support of EVs due to the products needing less manpower to produce, which could eliminate tens of thousands of jobs not just in manufacturing, but also in supporting services like insurance and trucking, according to the NYT. Biden has made union support a key part of his campaign and presidential policy, but his push to have half...

General Motors will lay off about 1,300 workers from two of its Michigan plants, according to WARN notices the company has filed with state regulators. The job cuts at GM’s Orion Assembly and Lansing Grand River Assembly, which will take place in the new year, come after the automaker said in October that it would be delaying electric pickup truck production into 2025. The layoffs at GM’s Orion plant will affect 945 employees, while 369 employees will be cut from the Lansing assembly plant. The Orion plant produced the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV crossover, and GM is planning...

The 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV is an early step in General Motors' promise of an electric vehicle future. "Our early experience in a Chevy Blazer EV has been anything but positive, sadly," said Alistair Weaver, editor-in-chief of Edmunds.com. *snip* "We took it into a Chevy dealer, asked them to have a look at it, and they came back with nothing short of 23 different error codes, which frankly is almost unheard of," said Weaver.

The layoffs, which mostly hit commercial operations and related corporate functions, comes one day after the robotaxi subsidiary dismissed nine “key leaders.” The moves are fallout from the company’s response to the Oct. 2 incident in which a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise self-driving car after being hit by another vehicle. Since the incident, the company has suspended all trips on public roads and halted production of a new robotaxi, among other moves. ... General Motors’ Cruise on Thursday announced internally that it will lay off 900 employees, or 24% of its workforce ... The layoffs, which...

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway unloaded its entire $850 million worth of General Motors (GM) stock last quarter, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

General Motors (GM) faces an unprecedented EV crisis as CEO Mary Barra unexpectedly halts EV production and scraps most electric plans. This abrupt move has reverberated across the automotive landscape. The primary reason? A significant lack of demand. Dealerships are overwhelmed with nearly 92,000 unsold EVs, posing a daunting challenge.

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to bring back a class action lawsuit alleging four auto manufacturers had violated Washington state’s privacy laws by using vehicles’ on-board infotainment systems to record and intercept customers’ private text messages and mobile phone call logs. The Seattle-based appellate judge ruled that the practice does not meet the threshold for an illegal privacy violation under state law, handing a big win to automakers Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors, which are defendants in five related class action suits focused on the issue. One of those cases, against Ford, had been dismissed on appeal previously....

General Motors is building Silverado EVs. It delivered a whole 18 of them during the third quarter of this year. It planned to expand production beyond its Detroit-Hamtramck facility, also known as "Factory Zero", by 2024 to Orion Assembly where the Bolt EV is built, albeit not for much longer. That plan has now been pushed back to late 2025, and according to GM, the decision was not made due to any supply shortages, or even the ongoing United Auto Workers strike. It could be indicative of waning consumer enthusiasm for fully electric vehicles as a whole. The automaker cited...

"[Michael] Andretti can make a case that keeping him out of F1 is indeed personal: Three different people with direct knowledge of the conversations confirmed to AP that F1 asked General Motors if it would partner with someone other than Andretti," wrote Jenna Fryer in her latest AP column.

Tesla, General Motors, and Ford have reportedly all hit the brakes on electric vehicle (EV) production, citing concerns of economic uncertainties fears of a slowdown in EV demand. On Wednesday, Tesla joined General Motors and Ford in being cautious about expanding EV production capacity, with the company’s CEO Elon Musk saying he was worried that higher borrowing costs would prevent potential customers from affording Tesla vehicles, according to a report by Reuters. “People hesitate to buy a new car if there’s uncertainty in the economy,” Musk reportedly said on a post-earnings call. “I don’t want to be going into top...

The United Auto Workers strike against the 'Big Three' Detroit carmakers entered its second day on Saturday, and some union members are questioning whether President Joe Biden has done enough to back their cause. The strike involves 13,000 workers so far, less than a tenth of the union's total membership, but UAW's strike fund has enough cash to support a full 150,000-member walkout for up to three months. The union representing workers at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis is seeking a 40 percent raise for its workers. The walkout is limited for now to three assembly plants: a GM factory...

The brother of President Joe Biden’s top adviser is a lobbyist for General Motors (GM), complicating matters for the White House as the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike against record inflation and the administration’s electric vehicle (EV) mandates. Jeff Ricchetti, the brother of Steve Ricchetti, who currently serves as Counselor to the President in the Biden administration, has a well-documented history of lobbying for GM. Steve Ricchetti was also once a lobbyist for GM. Most recently, Politico buried in a report regarding Biden’s ties to GM CEO Mary Barra how the White House has many close ties to the automaker....

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden visited members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) who are striking against General Motors (GM), Ford, and Stellantis. The president, though, failed to make mention his Electric Vehicle (EV) mandates which are partly responsible for the strike. Tens of thousands of auto workers are striking against the Big Three across the United States, looking to secure a new labor contract that includes wage increases to keep up with Biden’s record inflation and commitments that their jobs will not be eliminated by Biden’s green energy agenda which includes EV mandates. During his visit with UAW members...