GM’s 2024 Chevrolet Equinox EV during a media launch event for the vehicle in Detroit, May 16, 2024.
Michael Wayland / CNBC
DETROIT – General Motors said Tuesday it is again slowing its plans for all-electric vehicles by further delaying a second U.S. electric truck plant and the Buick brand’s first EV.
The six-month delay in building the electric truck plant in Michigan, until mid-2026, also means GM will not achieve a prior target of having North American production capacity of 1 million EVs by 2025.
“We are committed to growing responsibly and profitably,” GM CEO Mary Barra told investors Tuesday during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.
Barra’s comments come a week after she raised concerns about GM hitting its North American EV production capacity target.
Barra did not provide updated timing on Buick’s first EV, which was expected in 2024. The entire Buick brand has targeted being fully electric by 2030, as part of GM’s plans to exclusively offer consumer EVs by 2035.
The changes add new questions about the Detroit automaker’s plans for future battery cell plants other than two current joint venture facilities with LG Energy Solution in North America. GM previously announced plans for four of the multibillion-dollar plants in the U.S. by 2026.
Barra on Tuesday said the company would grow cell production in a “meaningful cadence.”
GM CFO Paul Jacobson declined to discuss potential plans to delay or cancel the automaker’s future EV battery cell plants, aside from the two facilities making cells in Ohio and Tennessee.
“We’re going to continue to be guided by the customer. We’re rapidly scaling in cell plants one and two,” Jacobson said during a media briefing. “We have nothing to comment on right now.”
GM’s U.S. EV deliveries increased 40% during the second quarter compared with a year earlier to 21,930 units. Still, EVs made up only 3.2% of its total second-quarter U.S. sales.
Jacobson said the company is set to ramp up assembly to achieve production and vehicle wholesales of between 200,000 and 250,000 all-electric vehicles in North America this year. He said the company wholesaled about 75,000 of its new EVs during the first half of the year.
Jacobson reiterated GM expects its EVs to be profitable on a production, or contribution-margin basis, once it reaches production of 200,000 units by the fourth quarter.
“We’re still holding to that,” Jacobson said, adding additional EV sales are expected to lower the company’s earnings, as they will have a variable profit lower than GM’s traditional gas models.
