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It’s not going to happen overnight, but the pieces are finally falling into place.
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Posted on EVANNEX on August 13, 2020 by Charles Morris
If you’re looking for confirmation that the internal combustion engine (ICE) is in jeopardy, ask Wall Street. Electric vehicle maker, Tesla, is soaring on Wall Street with S&P inclusion and a 5-for-1 stock split on the horizon. Trying to bet on the next Tesla, investors have started throwing money into the EV sector in a way that’s reminiscent of the 1990s internet boom (and yes, t
Meanwhile, the legacy automakers, deeply entrenched in the ICE business, are getting no respect on the Street. GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler all recently reported second-quarter earnings that beat expectations, but saw their share prices post significant drops for the week.
As CNBC’s Michael Wayland reports, electromobility, or the lack of it, is a big part of the story here. On GM’s recent earnings call, analysts asked CEO Mary Barra some uncomfortable questions about the company’s electrification progress. Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner floated the idea of GM spinning off its EV line into a separate brand, and Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas mischievously asked whether the company might do well to change its name to “Ultium,” which is GM’s brand name for its next-generation EV batteries.
To be sure, one big reason analysts have soured on the Big Three is the belief that traditional ICE sales will take a long time to recover from the pandemic-induced slowdown. According to Wayland, there’s a failure to “successfully adapt to emerging technologies such as electric and autonomous vehicles.”
In May, Ken Morris, GM’s VP for Electric and Autonomous Vehicles, said that GM will be all-electric “sooner than people would think,” and that there would be “no slowdown” to the company’s EV programs. On the earnings call, Mary Barra reiterated that GM is standing by its plan to invest $20 billion over the next five years in autonomous and electric vehicles.
That may sound like a lot, but it represents a small fraction of the company’s total vehicle production. According to data from AutoForecast Solutions, GM and Ford collectively plan to produce about 325,000 EVs in 2026—about 5% of the two automakers’ combined vehicle production in North America. Tesla produced over 367,000 EVs in 2019, and some analysts predict that it will be building over a million units per year once the Berlin and Texas Gigafactories come online.
What does GM have in its electric pipeline? The electric Hummer pickup, which will surely be a high-priced, low-volume model, is scheduled to go into production in the fall of 2021—about the same time Tesla’s Cybertruck is supposed to start rolling out of Texas. The Cadillac Lyriq crossover, the first of a promised range of electric Cadillacs, won’t arrive at US dealerships until late 2022, as John Voelcker points out in a recent article in The Drive. Meanwhile, you can buy a Tesla Model Y today.