GM Says It’s Well On the Way to 1 Million EVs by 2025

• Chevrolet has more than 150,000 reservations for its 2024 Silverado EV (prototype pictured above), which goes on sale in spring 2023, with 65% conquest buyers and 70% on the East and West coasts.

• GMC has more than 80,000 reservations for its monster Hummer EV currently in production, “with momentum growing.”

• Chevrolet Blazer EV production begins in the summer of 2023, followed by the $30,000 base-price Equinox EV beginning production in the fall.

General Motors expects to produce 400,000 electric vehicles in 2022-24, on its way to its longstanding goal to reach 1 million by 2025, said CEO Mary Barra in a Tuesday investors’ call following release of the automaker’s second-quarter financial results. Meanwhile, its Cruise autonomous-vehicle subsidiary will expand coverage, hours of operation, and fleet size for its “ride hail” service, which launched in San Francisco last November.

Barra highlighted these EV models in Tuesday’s call:

• Chevrolet has more than 150,000 reservations for its 2024 Silverado EV, which goes on sale in spring 2023, with 65% conquest buyers and 70% on the East and West coasts. Ford said it closed off reservations for its F-150 Lightning EV early this year after hitting 200,000 reservations.

• GMC has more than 80,000 reservations for its monster Hummer EV currently in production, “with momentum growing,” including 42% of those (about 33,600) new to GM and 75% new to GMC. Biggest markets for the GMC Hummer are California, Florida, and Texas.

• No reservation numbers were released on the Cadillac Lyriq, now in production in the onetime Saturn assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, though Barra says 70% of its customers are new to Cadillac and 30% are from the Western region of the US. Barra says Lyriq’s production at Spring Hill will accelerate through the second half of 2022 and into ’23.

• Chevrolet Blazer EV production begins in the summer of 2023, followed by the $30,000 base-price Equinox EV beginning production in the fall.

• Cruise—an autonomous Chevy Bolt (pictured below) with no steering wheel or brake and throttle controls—has given more than 1,000 rides in San Francisco since driverless ride-hail service began last November. It will expand to “hundreds” of cars deployed in the City by the Bay by the end of this year. GM says Cruise has the potential for $50 billion in annualized revenue by decade’s end.

• BrightDropZero electric delivery van production launches at GM’s CAMI plant in Ingersol, Ontario, late this year with annualized production of 30,000 vehicles “and the ability to double by mid-decade.” This all but confirms our recent story that Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana EV replacements will be built in the same plant as the larger delivery vans.

Despite tight supply of key battery materials—and supply shortages brought about by the global COVID-19 pandemic—GM is confident it can meet its EV production goals, with four US battery-cell manufacturing plants about to come online, an “increasingly localized supply chain,” and direct sourcing of 75% of its needs through 2030.

On the internal combustion-powered side of its business, however, supply-chain bottlenecks reduced GM’s production schedule in the second quarter. The company has 90,000 nearly completed vehicles waiting for certain components, about 75,000 of them full-size trucks and SUVs, Barra said.

GM says its financial results capitalized “on a strong pricing environment driven by robust demand and low inventory …” Read: Computer chips went first in highly equipped, top-trim models. But this was “offset by supply-chain disruptions experienced primarily in June (see China’s complete shutdown of Shanghai after a coronavirus breakout). GM’s adjusted earnings before income tax (EBIT) for Q2 of this year was $2.3 billion, compared with $4.1 billion for Q2 of 2021.

GM’s next investors’ meeting, following its third-quarter results, is scheduled for November 17 in New York City, and will include a “hands-on” demonstration of its latest EVs.