Of all the so-called "legacy" automakers, it seems lately as if General Motors is pulling off the electric transition better than most.
It ascended to the coveted No. 2 EV seller spot behind Tesla in Q1, it continues to expand its portfolio of electric models, and perhaps most importantly of all, it's making great strides with battery scale and chemistry development. And company leaders like CEO Mary Barra are adamant that electric power is where things are going long-term.
But that doesn't mean the General is above hedging its bets.
The story of GM's pushback against California's tough all-electric rules kicks off this Monday edition of Critical Materials, our morning roundup of industry and technology news. Also on deck today: Volkswagen gets more optimistic about its chances in China, and a new report about Apple's failures with AI sheds light on its scrapped car program. Let's dig in.
30%: GM Urges Employees To Push Back On California's 2035 EV 'Mandate'
“We need your help!”, reads the email GM sent to thousands of its non-hourly employees last week, the Wall Street Journal reports. "Emissions standards that are not aligned with market realities pose a serious threat to our business by undermining consumer choice and vehicle affordability.”
Specifically, GM is pushing back against a three-year-old regulation in California that will ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035. And California isn't just the biggest state for new car sales in the union; about a dozen other states follow its stringent emissions rules, meaning that this ban could extend to a good chunk of the country, whether the new and more gas-friendly Trump administration wants that or not. (It, too, is pushing back on this rule.)
From the WSJ:
GM set its own internal goal of ending sales of nearly all gas-only vehicles by 2035 and initially supported the California target, while advocating for a uniform national standard.
But the EV market has taken a turn. Three years ago, U.S. automakers couldn’t keep up with demand; now EV sales are beginning to sputter. Discounts are drying up, car buyers are seeking lower-priced alternatives, and Congress is looking to roll back tax credits that for years have powered electric-vehicle sales.
Even in California, America’s EV market leader, sales are below the state’s own targets. Under the rule, in 2026, sales of zero-emissions vehicles should account for 35% of all vehicle sales. Right now, they account for 20% of the state’s automobile market.
[...] GM abandoned a self-imposed target to build 400,000 electric vehicles by mid-2024, and last year the company said it would delay plans for a new Buick electric vehicle and push back the opening of an EV truck factory.
It's not entirely surprising for an automaker that still makes the bulk of its profits from selling gas-powered pickup trucks. So, how do you square this effort with GM's EV progress and battery development plans?
First of all, when automakers made their big plans to go all-electric by some year—sometimes by the close of this decade, sometimes by 2035—they were working off projections that they could simply pivot away from gas power and move to battery power, as if phasing out one model for another. That has proven to be vastly more difficult than anticipated. Most carmakers would blame the lack of EV charging infrastructure for this, which is why they're taking matters into their own hands more and more. Yet battery costs remain high, the political cards are now stacked against EVs in America and car companies are struggling in other areas too, like software.
My read is that lately, GM seems to be making the right moves to lay the groundwork for a more-electric or mostly-electric long-term future—if not an all-electric one. But given current trendlines, it's certainly not counting on the Silverado EV (or some future version of it) to fully replace the gas Silverado in a decade, or anything else. Plus, as that story notes, even some Democrats are against a blanket ban on gas cars within 10 years.
Market realities indeed. But GM, and America, also cannot ignore how far ahead China is in the electrification race—or the climate consequences of not moving transportation in a more sustainable direction.
60%: Volkswagen Gets More Optimistic About China
I recently wrote about Volkswagen's new "in China, for China" strategy for building EVs: leaning much more heavily on local partners who now have a significant lead on battery power and software to help them appeal more to Chinese buyers.
Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume seems optimistic about the plan, he told Autotmotive News, but warned that the results won't be seen right away:
We are now developing in China for China. Cars that are tailor-made for the needs of the customers in terms of technology and design. This year and next, we will be putting the first locally designed vehicles on the road. When the cars were presented at the Shanghai auto show, the response was overwhelming. By 2027, we aim to introduce 40 new models from the group in China, 20 of which are battery-electric cars. This makes us fully competitive in terms of technology and price... And unlike new brands on the market, we have a huge dealer and service network that our customers appreciate.
Our new China Electronics Architecture (CEA) is about to be ready for series production. And we have set up our own platform for compact vehicles (CMP). Both are fully competitive, both technologically and in terms of price. The design of our vehicles is also completely geared to the tastes of customers in China.
2025 will be another challenging year for us in China. I am confident that we will develop our full potential there from 2026.
As for the Porsche brand specifically, they definitely seem to be still figuring things out.
90%: Apple's AI Problem Was Also An Apple Car Problem
It's no secret that tech giant Apple is pretty behind the curve on AI, with key features promoted in ads being somewhere between "delayed" and "totally MIA." Bloomberg has an excellent in-depth story on how the world's largest company by market capitalization got kind of rolled on a technology expected to drive the future in unprecedented and unexpected ways.
Interestingly, Apple's AI issues also bled into the problems it had with its now-canceled Apple Car program. Apple reportedly spent $1 billion a year for about a decade on that project, which ultimately yielded nothing... or did it? From the story:
The company killed its self-driving car project last year, after spending billions of dollars on it across a decade, in part because it realized its AI wouldn’t be able to deliver on the promise of a fully autonomous vehicle.
Continued failure on AI would likely doom many of Apple’s plans for the future, from augmented-reality glasses and robots to watches and earbuds that can recognize objects in the world around them.
[...] Apple’s car project did yield one early AI success: a specialized component, the Apple Neural Engine, that allowed its chips to handle the vast amount of AI processing needed for autonomous driving.
Chips with the neural engine would later become standardized across the iPhone, iPad and other hardware, giving the company’s devices the capability to run generative AI models.
Maybe the Apple Car will be a footnote in a larger story—provided Apple can get its AI game together, of course.
100%: What Role Do You Think AI Will Play In Future Cars?
After experiencing some new cars in China, I can tell you that their software game is equally as impressive as their battery game. Popular new models from automakers like Nio and BYD have AI-powered voice assistants with conversational language understanding; they aren't just "say a command" followed by a yes or a no like our software systems are, but ones that ask intuitive questions to find out what you really need. I didn't really understand the potential of this stuff until I tried it.
But folks in China are into that sort of thing. What role do you think AI assistants, or AI in general, will play for future cars in the U.S. and Europe? I think if a car is smart enough to book you a doctor's appointment, tell you when it's happening and also how to get there, plenty of folks will want it. They just haven't seen it yet.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
