General Motors will be the leader in electric vehicles by mid-decade. Or so said GM chairman and CEO Mary Barra at a recent event in Lansing, Michigan, where she announced a multibillion-dollar effort to produce all-electric trucks. Barra delivered the fighting words in her deadpan style, and she doesn’t blink, flinch, or make caveats along with such statements. She says GM has the might, money, manufacturing, and expertise to dominate the electric vehicle space the way it once dominated the world of combustion-engine vehicles. To achieve this necessarily means taking down Tesla, keeping Volkswagen’s ambitions at bay, and holding off Ford’s frontal attack.
GM has committed to spending $35 billion to introduce 30 EVs by 2025, at which point it expects to build more than 1 million electric vehicles annually in North America alone. The goal: an all-electric-powered lineup by 2035.
Half of GM’s North American plants will convert to build EVs by 2030. The company has so far identified five of those locations: Factory Zero in Detroit-Hamtramck, Spring Hill in Tennessee, the Orion assembly plant in Michigan, the CAMI
