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General Motors

GM says supply chain issues won’t affect EV profitability by 2025 • ZebethMedia

General Motors says supply chain constraints won’t hinder the automaker’s goal of reaching electric vehicle profitability by 2025. GM expects its EV portfolio to have “the same margin profile” as its internal combustion engine portfolio over the next three years once factoring in U.S. tax credits for cars and trucks, CEO Mary Barra said Thursday at GM’s investor conference. The automaker expects to generate more than $50 billion in revenue from sales of its 30 EV models in 2025, with profit margins in the low to mid single digits. Investors have been skeptical of GM’s promises, citing macro headwinds like increased battery raw material costs. Doug Parks, GM’s executive vice president of global product development, purchasing and supply chain, admitted that those costs could put GM’s targets at risk. However, Parks said a combination of increased efficiencies in GM’s Ultium EV platform — which is the underlying EV and battery architecture that will help GM scale its EV lineup — and supply chain agreements that are locked in through 2025 will reduce those macro impacts. “GM has signed binding agreements to secure the battery raw materials to support 1 million units of annual capacity in North America by 2025,” said Parks. “These are not just handshakes, these are not just meetings or MOUs.” GM is hoping to reduce cell costs by nearly 40% to an $87 per kilowatt hour by 2025, and then down to a $70 per kilowatt hour from mid to late decade. The automaker’s stock experienced a mid-day spike, rising 1.75% at around 1:45 pm ET. At market close, GM’s share price settled at an increase of 0.39%. GM’s supply chain landscape Parks highlighted GM’s agreement with Livent to source lithium hydroxide from its North American facility starting in 2025, a strategic investment and collaboration with CTR to source lithium from the Salton Sea in California using a closed loop geothermal process, and an agreement to secure sustainable cobalt from Glencore’s Murrin Murrin mine in Australia. In addition, GM has made a strategic investment in Queensland Pacific Metals for cobalt and nickel processing in Australia, as well as a long-term agreement with Vale for high-grade nickel sourced and processed in Canada. “We also have an agreement with LG Chem for enough cathode active material through 2030 for the equivalent of 5 million units of EV production, a joint venture with [South Korean steel-making company] Posco on a plant in North America, which we expect will open in Quebec in the first quarter of 2025.” In the interim, Posco will supply GM with materials from their South Korean operations, said Parks.  Parks added that GM has price controls in place for lithium that will dampen the volatility and pricing the market has seen over the past year. He noted the new clean energy tax credits will help GM accelerate its process of creating a domestic supply chain for EVs in North America. “The credits are very much in line with the strategy we’ve been executing for the past few years and will enable us to increase our footprint domestically with Free Trade Agreement partners.” GM is also working with recycling affiliates to take scrap from battery cell plants and return critical materials to make new batteries or even sell materials at market rate, said Parks. Beyond battery cells, Parks said GM has long-term supply agreements in place with key EV motor component suppliers, including binding agreements with GE to support the development of a North American and European base rare earth copper and electrical steel value chain. Many of these agreements are in place to help the company scale cell production rapidly once its four battery plants are underway. GM said its Lordstown, Ohio plant has already opened, with Spring Hill, Tennessee close behind. The automaker is also building a plant in Lansing, Michigan, and is exploring a location in Indiana for its fourth plant. Until those factories come online, GM is still mainly buying cells, which is a roadblock to high EV margins today.

BrightDrop is tracking $1 billion revenue in 2023 • ZebethMedia

General Motors’ e-delivery van subsidiary BrightDrop said Thursday it’s on track to reach $1 billion in revenue next year. The company, which launched in 2021 and was incubated at the automaker’s global innovation center, said reaching the financial milestone would make it one of the quickest tech startups to reach unicorn status, ahead of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Tesla, which took five or more years to reach their first billion. BrightDrop also unveiled Thursday at GM’s Investor Day BrightDrop Core, a subscription-based software platform that combines data generated from its other products to provide customers with more detailed insight into their operations. The platform will launch early next year to feature a user portal and mobile productivity apps. The company reported that it has received more than 25,000 reservations and letters of intent from customers including Walmart, Hertz, FedEx and Verizon for its Zevo 600 all-electric commercial van, which is already on the road. The company said that it’s set to generate up to $10 billion in revenue and reach profit margins of 20% by the end of the decade. Travis Katz, BrightDrop president and CEO, said that BrightDrop’s recent expansion into the online grocery sector will help it capture “substantial market share across multiple industries.” “We’re a tech startup with a subscription-based product offering that’s backed by a global powerhouse — this puts us in a league of our own,” Katz said in a statement.

BrightDrop is tracking $1 billion revenue in 2023 • ZebethMedia

General Motors’ e-delivery van subsidiary BrightDrop said Thursday it’s on track to reach $1 billion in revenue next year. The company, which launched in 2021 and was incubated at the automaker’s global innovation center, said reaching the financial milestone would make it one of the quickest tech startups to reach unicorn status, ahead of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Tesla, which took five or more years to reach their first billion. BrightDrop also unveiled Thursday at GM’s Investor Day BrightDrop Core, a subscription-based software platform that combines data generated from its other products to provide customers with more detailed insight into their operations. The platform will launch early next year to feature a user portal and mobile productivity apps. The company reported that it has received more than 25,000 reservations and letters of intent from customers including Walmart, Hertz, FedEx and Verizon for its Zevo 600 all-electric commercial van, which is already on the road. The company said that it’s set to generate up to $10 billion in revenue and reach profit margins of 20% by the end of the decade. Travis Katz, BrightDrop president and CEO, said that BrightDrop’s recent expansion into the online grocery sector will help it capture “substantial market share across multiple industries.” “We’re a tech startup with a subscription-based product offering that’s backed by a global powerhouse — this puts us in a league of our own,” Katz said in a statement.

GM pauses paid advertising on Twitter as Chief Twit Elon Musk takes ownership • ZebethMedia

General Motors has temporarily paused paid advertising on Twitter, one day after billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk finalized a $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform. CNBC was the first to report GM’s decision. ZebethMedia confirmed the U.S. automaker’s decision. “We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership,” the company said in an emailed statement to ZebethMedia. “As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue.” It’s unclear what percentage of GM’s total advertising budget is dedicated to Twitter. Most, if not all, automakers have a presence on Twitter. Although not all of them opt for paid advertising. Ford, GM, Stellantis, Porsche, VW and Volvo are just a handful of the established automakers along with newer companies like Rivian that have social media accounts on the platform. Fisker is still on Twitter even after its founder and CEO Henrik Fisker deleted his personal account in April following the announcement of the Musk-Twitter deal. Musk tried to quell advertisers’ fear earlier this week with a note posted on his personal Twitter account about his intended approach to running the social media platform. “There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising,” Musk wrote. “Most of it has been wrong.” He went on to write that he believes Twitter has the potential to be a “common digital town square,” and that the platform cannot be “a free-for-all hellscape.” Musk’s promises might not be enough for GM as it seeks to compete and even surpass Tesla in EV sales.

5 things you didn’t know about Cadillac’s $300,000 Celestiq EV • ZebethMedia

Cadillac confirmed Monday that its forthcoming flagship Celestiq sedan will launch late next year with all of the futuristic bells and whistles befitting a bespoke EV starting “north of $300,000.” The Celestiq isn’t just a flagship for the GM luxury brand. The four-seater is slated to set the direction for the brand’s transition to a full battery-electric lineup by 2030. GM is loading up the Celestiq with new features and tech, pushing the price point well beyond other Cadillac models. When GM begins building the Celestiq by hand December 2023 at its Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, the vehicle will cost roughly 10 times an entry-level Cadillac. What will customers get for that six-figure price tag? The all-electric sedan will feature a 600-horsepower, dual-motor, all-wheel-drive setup that can travel from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.8 seconds, and use the same Ultium platform that will underpin GM’s other future EVs. Cadillac estimates that the sedan can travel around 300 miles on a fully charged battery, and said it will be equipped with a 200 kW DC fast charging system capable of adding 78 miles in 10 minutes. Here are five other features you didn’t know about the forthcoming Cadillac Celestiq. Smart roof The Cadillac Celestiq will use the largest piece of automotive glass in the world, according to the company. The all-glass roof measures 7.5 millimeters thick – double the depth of a high-grade acoustic windshield – and uses Suspended Particle Device technology, a type of film invented by Woodbury, New York-based glass supplier Research Frontiers. The film, which is already used in the roofs of certain models from McLaren, Mercedes-Benz and others, allows each passenger to adjust the overhead lighting by controlling the transparency of the glass, from less than 1%, for the darkest level of opacity to the 20% tint of a standard sunroof. Privacy blinds Research Frontiers is also behind – or, in front of – the Celestiq’s five high-definition, interactive LED display screens. A 55-inch-diagonal screen that stretches pillar to pillar, unites two separate screens under a single pane of glass, with pixel density comparable to an 8K screen. Rear passengers get 12.6-inch seatback displays. Lest these screens distract the driver, the car will employ electronic digital blinds – another application of Research Frontiers’  Suspended Particle Device technology – designed to let passengers consume content in private. 3D-printing The Celestiq’s spacious cabin will spotlight a 3D-printed steering wheel, GM’s largest-ever printed production part. Altogether, the car uses about 115 3D-printed components throughout its body, chassis, interior and electrical system. That includes the seat belt loop guide – GM’s first safety-related 3D printed part – as well as window switches and grab handles. The architecture of the car’s underbody is designed to simplify the hand-built process. Its shock towers are constructed from six large cast aluminum components, with one shock alone supplanting up to 40 components from the overall body part count, according to Brandon Vivian, Cadillac’s executive chief engineer. This helps reduce weight and maximize space for more important features such as optional 23-inch forged aluminum wheels. Ultra Cruise Cadillac executives said that the Celestiq will come equipped for eventual “driveway-to-destination” Level 4-style autonomous driving. The car will use Ultra Cruise, a hands-free driver assistance technology and successor to GM’s Super Cruise suite of hardware. Celestiq will also come equipped with the necessary Ultra Cruise hardware to provide incremental progress through over-the-air software updates. Concierge service Not all Cadillac dealers will carry the Celestiq. “All dealers will be offered the opportunity to be able to sell the Celestiq,” said Rory Harvey, global vice president for Cadillac. “There is a significant investment requirement, so we don’t believe that all dealers will want to take that opportunity.” That investment includes retaining a concierge to help customize colors and materials. Cadillac said the Celestiq is available “by waitlist only.”  

Who is going to buy Cadillac’s $300,000 hand-built EV? • ZebethMedia

The battery-electric Celestiq sedan, which starts “north of $300,000,”  is tasked with more than restoring Cadillac to its former glory; it now must back executives’ bold claim to “reestablish the iconic brand as the standard of the world.” But with a price tag more than three times the average transaction price of a vehicle from General Motors’ luxury marque, it’s difficult to imagine many Cadillacs of that heft — no matter how highly customized — will be quietly charging behind suburban garage doors. As the market enters an age where lower priced EVs pack 300-mile ranges along eye-popping horsepower and torque, who needs a bespoke EV? Cadillac is betting on it. The GM luxury brand, which plans to follow the market in phasing out gas engines by 2030, is trying to zig where its luxury competitors are zagging. Executives boasted that the brand will build, on average, fewer than two Celestiqs a day, when it goes into hand-built production at GM’s Technical Center outside of Detroit in December 2023. But will customers bite? The specs Cadillac revealed Monday don’t seems spectacular enough to justify the price. Built on the same Ultium platform underpinning all of General Motors’ future EVs, the Celestiq will feature a 600-horsepower, dual-motor, all-wheel-drive setup that can go from 0 to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds – a crawl compared with some Teslas, Porsches and the Ford Mach-E Mustang GT Performance model). Cadillac estimates that the sedan can travel around 300 miles on a fully charged battery, which will be the industry standard by the time the Celestiq arrives. High-tech features include a four-quadrant, adjustable smart roof, a 3D-printed steering wheel, and the latest iteration of Cadillac’s Ultra Cruise advanced driver assistance system. The car, available at certain Cadillac dealers “by waitlist only,” will come with a concierge to help decide upon colors, trims and materials. So far, the brand’s “whisper events” have shown a “broad spectrum of high-net worth individuals that would consider wanting to have a vehicle like this,” said Rory Harvey, global vice president for Cadillac. Cadillac has not specified how many “extremely low-volume” Celestiqs it will build but said it expects to sell the majority in North America, followed by China and the Middle East. Executives were emboldened this spring by high demand for its first-ever EV, the $60,000 Cadillac Lyriq SUV expected later this year, that forced it to close its 2023 order book earlier than expected. “I believe that we primed the pump,” Harvey said. “We have very solid foundations now to take the brand to the next level.” Still, is there demand for a Cadillac with fivefold the starting price? Executives said they believe buyers are willing to spend even more, noting that a fully loaded Escalade V, the high-performance version of Cadillac’s full-size SUV, pushes $150,000, and that some Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing models venture into six-figure territory. “We believe that we’ve got the ability to be able to generate customer demand at this higher price point,” Harvey said. Cadillac expects to begin delivering the Celestiq to customers in 2025, with high hopes for a revival. “Cadillac at a point in time was referred to as the standard of the world,” Harvey said. “We believe in terms of this vehicle that it gives us the ability to start to reclaim some of that position.”            

GM is in the energy business now • ZebethMedia

General Motors is launching a new line of energy products to homeowners, businesses and utilities — the next step in an EV offensive designed to generate revenue beyond making and selling electric vehicles and aimed directly at Tesla. The product line will be housed under a new business unit called GM Energy and covers the gamut of EV ownership, including stationary energy storage, solar through a partnership with Sun Run and bi-directional charging technology to deliver power from the vehicle to their home or to the grid. GM Energy has also developed a cloud product that houses data and management software and helps tie all of these hardware products together and ultimately, balance out the power grid while providing an incentive to EV owners. The new business unit has also developed large-scale batteries for utilities as well as hydrogen fuel cells, Travis Hester, vice president of GM’s EV growth operations, told ZebethMedia in a recent interview. GM Energy is divided into three sectors covering residential, commercial and charging. Each sector carries the Ultium name, the same branding that GM gave to the next-generation electric vehicle platform and batteries of its new and upcoming EVs. The home energy system, which includes stationary storage similar to Tesla’s Powerwall product, will debut with the launch of the 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV. GM did not release pricing information on its new products. The pitch to homeowners The Ultium Home line includes stationary battery called Powervault, an EV charger, solar through its partner Sun Run and a controller box that will link everything together. But GM’s big pitch to consumers isn’t just about how stationary storage can keep the lights on at home during a blackout or even how solar energy can charge their EV. Instead, GM is also touting a system that will allow consumers to sell energy from their EV and stationary storage batteries back to utilities during peak, high energy consumption periods. The business unit already has a pilot project with Pacific Gas and Electric Company that lets residential customers use their compatible EVs along with a bi-directional charger, as backup power for essential home needs during short-term power outages. The companies expect to expand the vehicle-to-home service in 2023 to a subset of residential customers within PG&E’s service area. Hester said GM also has a partnership with an unnamed real estate developer in California for a 3,000-home development that will have a pre-installed charger, Powervault, solar and controller box to links them all together in every residence. The pitch to commercial businesses Image Credits: GM The Ultium commercial line includes much larger megawatt-sized batteries for energy storage as well as a cloud services product that houses data and energy management software. The megawatt storage battery, similar in some ways to Tesla’s Megapack, already has garnered interest from commercial business and utilities, according to Hester. About 10 companies have signed on for either pilot programs or to buy the batteries and accompanying software. The commercial line is close, but not identical, to what Tesla has been selling. GM Energy is also marketing fuel cells, specifically selling the electrolyzer used to make hydrogen that then goes into the fuel cell. This fuel cell product can be sent into the stationary storage battery or directly into the grid, Hester said. The final piece, called Energy Services Cloud, is what Hester describes as the brains of the operation. This hub of GM Energy’s products can be used by residential, fleet and commercial customers to manage their energy consumption through software applications. The cloud product, which can fold into a utility’s software, is a conduit of information between customers and the grid. “It will help us understand and be able to manage energy rates on a per state basis and just understand what blackouts or low energy supply issues we are going to have,” Hester said, adding it also helps manage customer behavior. For instance, the cloud product can calculate spare capacity and then communicate to consumers through an app or web browser to plug in their EVs. The GM Energy cloud service and software can then take little pieces of consumers’ battery capacity (for those who sign onto this) and aggregate that together and offer it up to utilities. The EV owner would then receive payment from the arrangement, which could be applied to a car payment or just taken as revenue, Hester said. “So this is a very, very powerful tool that we’ve been building,” Hester said. “This energy cloud is going to help us with knowing how and when to talk to a large amount of customers. If we want to go access a million customers in a few minutes, we have to have ways to go do that and then to be able to talk to the utilities about what energy they need, and be able to manage behavior en masse.” Some residential customers are already enrolled in an EV charging management program through their utility that uses the Energy Services Cloud. GM Energy is also working with Con Edison, Graniterock and New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC), according to the automaker. Power balance Image Credits: GM The global automotive industry is in the midst of a shift away from internal combustion engines towards electrified vehicles. Against that backdrop, the problem of an aging, overloaded power grid looms. This isn’t just a problem in developing countries. Power outages in the United States have become increasingly common. On average, U.S. electricity customers experienced just over eight hours of electric power interruptions in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It’s the highest figure since the EIA began collecting electricity reliability data in 2013. And while researchers note that the full economic cost of big power outages can be nearly impossible to calculate, the Department of Energy has calculated U.S. commerce loses $150 billion annually from power failures. A lot of people mistakenly think EVs are the problem that will create issues for the power grid, Hester said, noting that California provides a good example.

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