Charging Ahead

Charging Ahead, General Motors, Mary Barra and The Reinvention of An American Icon, by David Welch, HarperCollins Leadership 2022

11/21/22

GM stock price  39.72

Ford                   13.95

Tesla                167.87

Toyota              142.16 

BMW                  83.50 euros

Eight years into Mary Barra's leadership as CEO, it's clear that the 114 year-old company founded in a wide-open opportunity and innovation time has undergone major surgery and can boast of not only a new heart beating steadily into this decade, but a new brain whose outlook has swiveled away from the combustion engine - e.g. the Corvette, the enormous Cadillac Escalade, and various forgotten vehicles - to this goal:  clean and electric by 2035.  

David Welch tells an unnerving story, ups and downs and brutal organization disputes, all conducted as market sectors shifted and foreign producers ate away at the base.  Given these crises - and the opportunities that smart execs like Ms. Barra found amid the chaos, it's clear that GM is a survivor - scarred and monitored carefully, but a survivor.  Never mind that Barra is a female - that happens, and sometimes there is an advantage there.  But for GM, the challenges were deep and unrelenting, driven from both ends of the production cycle - from  design and supply management, through production and consumer responses.  No piece of the landscape remains untouched.

One of Barra's on-going challenges is getting GM to the right and profitable size.  With eager competitors worldwide the CEO saw how smaller markets were essentially draining GM's energy, and she set out to tackle that problem with aggressive downsizing and moves.  "We're here to win," she said as she closed or sold at least thirteen overseas plants.  "We aren't going to win by being all things to all people everywhere.  It's not the right strategy."  In fact, retired GM Chairman Jack Smith looking back says, "She's very capable and she has done some things that I would never have done...  We were in a lot of places with small market share and not doing well and she got rid of them.  I wouldn't have done that.  She did."  

But right-sizing and financial repair is miles away from the earth-shaking next big move -  away from the combustion engine to clean, electric machines.  Price differentials, despite consumer enthusiasm are, however, egregious. Author Welch notes that the average EV costs $65,000, with the Equinox and Blazer targeted to retail as low as $30,000, well below any pricing Tesla, for instance, can offer.  Lithium batteries, a key unknown in this EV shift, will tell the story.  By the end of 2023, according to Welch, GM will have two battery plants open.  Watch carefully - we just might see US automotive leadership take the podium once again 

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com