GM navigates the pandemic

Mary Barra CEO General Motors

The auto business used to be pretty simple. Crank out vehicles that people want and collect profits.

It’s gotten a lot more complicated since Mary Barra became CEO of General Motors in 2014.

She has cut costs and streamlined management, closed factories and sold off money-losing operations, partly in preparation for the next downturn.

Thanks to the coronavirus, it’s here. Barra talked with The Associated Press about steering GM through the crisis. Virus cases are rising, and you’re going to cancel the third shift at a factory in Wentzville, Missouri, because you don’t have enough workers. Could factories be shut down again?

If you step back to March, and even before then, we had a lot of learnings from China, from Korea and the United States. We believe we do a very good job of keeping people safe by reducing the possibility that someone with COVID can enter our plants. And then all the work we do within the facilities to prevent the spread. People understood that we’re working hard to keep the environment safe for them. One of the things we’re trying to do now is really encourage people to use those same protocols when they’re not at work. They’re wearing masks, they’re hand washing, and social distancing. At Wentzville, one of the things we do is screen. We are taking the precaution to say that you need to quarantine until we know you don’t have the virus. I’ve been at 10 plants since we started back up. When I talk to people, they understand the protocol. To a person, they tell me I feel safer here than I do at the grocery store.

Are you concerned that states might return to stay-home orders?

We are watching everything very carefully. The conversation I’ve had with many different officials is they understand with the protocols that people are safe at work. I think we’re seeing steps being taken across many of these areas with lessons learned about what worked well in reopenings and what didn’t. In Michigan now you see the requirement that people wear masks. I think you’re seeing steps being taken in more places. That allows the numbers to go back down. Do you think auto sales are going to get back to normal soon, in the U.S. and globally?

We think it’s going to be a relatively short-lived recession. But we have a long way to go because we went to a pretty low base. The new outbreaks do pose potential setbacks, but we’re hopeful that the U.S. economy will be back to 90% of pre-pandemic levels early next year. There’s a lot of uncertainty.

Tesla has said it has 400 miles of battery range. Is that within reach for General Motors?

A lot of the customer research we’ve done, we know 300 mile range is a sweet spot. With the flexibility of the Ultium platform, we have the capability to go higher than 300. We’ll be looking at what the value equation is for the customer.