GM predicts e-vehicle gains by ’25
Battery drop among factors expected to cut production costs
DETROIT — General Motors is losing money on every electric vehicle it sells, but the company says it’s on track to generate mid single-digit pretax profit margins in 2025 as it produces more higher margin electrics, works out kinks in battery manufacturing, and sees battery cost reductions.
That’s what Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson told analysts at a Barclays conference in New York on Thursday, conceding that the company has struggled to ramp up electric vehicle manufacturing. “While the ramp has been a little bit bumpy, we have worked through that,” he said.
Specifically, the company has had trouble with machinery that stacks battery cells into modules at its Ultium Cells battery plant near Warren, Ohio, a joint venture with LG Energy Solution of Korea.
The guidance on Thursday of mid-single-digit profit margins in two years is a little better than the low-to-mid single digits the company has estimated in the past, Jacobson said. But the new figure includes benefits from U.S. government clean energy tax credits.
Jacobson said current margins on electric vehicles are “substantially negative” as the company builds battery plants, retools factories and then underutilizes them as electric vehicle production and demand grow.
While the rate of electric vehicle sales growth has slowed in the United States this year, Jacobson said demand continues to rise. The company still plans to build factory capacity to manufacture 1 million electric vehicles per year by the end of 2025, but it won’t make all of them if the demand isn’t there. “I don’t want to stuff vehicles into a market that doesn’t want them,” he said, adding that GM also doesn’t want to sell electric vehicles at big discounts.
The growth of U.S. electric vehicle sales has slowed sharply since last year. In June 2022, electric vehicle sales were growing about 90% year over year. By June of this year the 12-month growth rate had slowed to about 50%, and it remained there at the end of October.
Automakers have become increasingly fearful that the pace may weaken further because of consumer concerns about high prices, a lack of charging stations and whether they will run out of juice.