In its Q3 earnings call, General Motors executives said it’s been a record year so far, upping its guidance for the rest of the year, and sharing that going into 2025 there will be a continued focus on matching electric vehicle production to consumer demand.

Near the end of last year, GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra noted that EV sales were slowing down but still growing as GM scaled back production of the segment, as did Ford.

Paul Jacobson, GM’s chief financial officer, told investors during the company’s Q3 2023 earnings call that the OEM is dropping its previously-announced 100,000 EV target it had set for the second half of 2023. GM hopes to sell 400,000 EVs during the first half of 2024.

Barra said in this year’s Q3 earnings call that GM is on track to produce and wholesale about 200,000 EVs in North America this year and “make our portfolio variable profit-positive this quarter.”

Earlier this month, CNBC reported that GM had lowered its EV production target of 250,000 for the year to 200,000. A previous target was 300,000. However, the automaker reported EV sales were growing, including an increase of roughly 60% over Q3 2023, according to CNBC.

GM also announced it had decided to stop using the name “Ultium” for its EV batteries and technology during its Oct. 8 Investor Day event.

During GM’s Q3 earnings call, Barra told investors the company isn’t “mistaking progress for winning.”

“The competition is fierce, and the regulatory environment will keep getting tougher,” she said. “That’s why we are focused on optimizing our ICE and EV margins. We have a very strong record in ICE.”

Jacobson added that GM has maintained strong ICE vehicle pricing compared to the industry overall with its “highly profitable” full-size pickup and full-size SUVs that continue to gain market share in their respective segments.

“Revenue was up 10% to $49 billion, with year-over-year volume growth in both ICE and EVs,” he said. “This is driven by having a great product portfolio and offering customers attractive choices in key segments… Some of the performance during the quarter was timing, including a pull forward of some full-size SUV production to support the ramp of the refreshed model during the fourth quarter and prioritizing full-size pickup availability.

According to Barra, business drivers for this year and next that are within the automaker’s control include “a wide range of new and redesigned ICE SUVs that are more profitable than the outgoing models; steadily improving EV profitability as we scale production and expand our portfolio; fixed cost discipline; capital efficiency, and improved results in China.”

“We are building momentum in all of these areas,” she added.

GM earned the No. 2 EV sales position in Q3 with its total share of the EV market approaching 10%, Barra said. GM’s Cadillac portfolio is expected to be another driver of volume and share growth for the company since EV consideration is much stronger among luxury customers than the mainstream market.

Building up EV momentum to create products customers love and are willing to pay for are “fundamental to our success,” Jacobson said.

“We continue to invest in the business,” he said. “While at the same time, we’re finding efficiencies and opportunities to make the business more profitable.”

Retooling plants a few years ago and setting up the foundation to grow EV production have allowed GM to scale as they want to and still maintain a balance with ICE vehicles, Jacobson said. Nearly one-third of GM’s program capital is going into ICE vehicles.

“We are in the process of ramping our refreshed full-size SUVs, which will have an impact on production rates as these are our most profitable vehicles; any production changes have an outsized impact on profitability,” he said.

Due to supply chain disruption caused by the recent hurricanes, Jacobson said GM factories that produce full-size pickups and SUVs had a few days of downtime during the quarter.

“As we look at the mix between ICE and EV, there’s been cases where we wait until the last moment where we have to make a decision on, ‘Are we going to do a next generation of an ICE version? How are we going to look at it from an EV perspective?’ And so we’re really being led by the customer,” Barra said. “We have that flexibility now that we have that infrastructure that Paul talked about. We’re really trying to respond to the market and be very efficient with our capital.”

Jacobson noted GM is working to address concerns consumers have about EVs, such as range anxiety by offering vehicles with a 300-mile battery range and supplementing charging infrastructure with new access to the Tesla Supercharger network.

“I think we’ve got a good road map and I think we’ve proven our resiliency… even though we’re at the lower end of what we projected our production to be at the beginning of the year. So continuing with that kind of scrappiness is, I think, what sets this team apart,” he said.

Images

Featured image: (Indianapolis, March 2023) Chevrolet SUVs are shown at a dealership. (Credit: jetcityimage/iStock)