It’s an intoxicating time to become a car manager. Lawmakers around the world are pushing the auto industry to electrify, and fast. US companies are under pressure to do so without giving any impetus to rival countries, especially China. Redesigning decades of internal combustion technology, business models and supply chains should be easy, right?
Meanwhile, another revolutionary technology is on the way: self-driving vehicles. Automakers and technology companies have invested hundreds of billions in the quest for robotic cars. That spending has yet to bear commercial fruit, but it is expected to reshape everything from cars to city streets and the job market.
Mark Reuss, the president of General Motors, has spent decades at the Detroit automaker and feels the ground shift beneath his feet. The company is ramping up production of new electric models such as the Cadillac Lyriq and Chevrolet Silverado EV, manufacturing its own battery packs in a joint venture with LG, and trying to move forward its self-driving subsidiary Cruise, whose operations in San Francisco have been disrupted. due to a serious accident and incidents involving freezing of cars on the road. In an interview edited for length and clarity, Reuss tells WIRED that he is optimistic about the reinvention of the automobile and the automaker’s future.
WIRED: I wanted to start by asking you about the Inflation Reduction Actthat links new tax credits for electric vehicles to strict requirements to set battery components in the US. How has that changed your thinking about the supply chain?
Mark Reuss: That started unfortunately with the pandemic and looking at our semiconductor supply chains. The whole industry goes to Taiwan, or that part of the world, to get them. And that’s not healthy. We really went into the EV delivery lines so we didn’t take things all over the world, but rather did it in our country. It also led to many decisions about the vertical integration of our battery platforms and cell chemistry. That was really good. We use 70 percent less cobalt in the chemicals we are launching now, compared to the Chevrolet Bolt.
How bad is it? chip shortage now? I hear from people who are flip their new EVs for more than they paid because vehicles are scarce. When do you expect everything to return to normal?
I don’t know what the new normal will be. We are in pretty good shape until the end of the year. There were about 95,000 vehicles on the ground waiting for supplies that we are now clearing. We handle the prices as best we can. I also see everything on the internet, you know, and it makes me sad.
Looking at the data, about our dealer network and all our vehicles, we’re slightly above our suggested retail price. The really good dealers don’t raise prices because it destroys their brand, it destroys our brand. We’re also deploying something called our digital retail platform, where customers can buy a vehicle any way they want, whether it’s online, at a dealer, or in the production pipeline.
