There is no more flummoxing company than General Motors. On most days I’m pretty sure there is no better collection of engineers anywhere in the world than at GM. And yet GM is not the most successful car company in the world. What’s going on here?
Here’s a fun game: name the companies that were first to market with a daily-drivable-ish production electric car, a production turbocharged car, a touch-screen dash in a production car, and airbags? It’s a trick question because the answer is GM (EV-1), GM, GM, GM, and yet the company, to varying degrees, didn’t pursue those technologies until other people proved them to be popular.
And now comes the news that GM is back to handing out dividends to investors. Give me a break.
Oh, also speaking of giving me a break, I somehow missed that MotorTrend named the Blazer EV the SUV of the Year? What?
And then we’re gonna talk about the Nissan Leaf and a Jeep recall. I’m in a bit of a mood this morning and I’m now going to vent my spleen at the Lord so prepare thyselves.
GM Announces Boosted Dividend And $10 Billion Stock Buyback
Do you remember when GM as a company was clearly on the verge of collapse and it kept handing out dividends until freaking May of 2008 when the world was already on fire? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
For those of you who don’t follow the stock market, a dividend is basically when a company hands out a portion of its profits to shareholders. This often happens on a quarterly basis, and it’s not intrinsically a good or a bad thing. Some companies are in a stable position and aren’t in a situation where large investments will necessarily yield more value and therefore will pass money back to investors. Many companies don’t hand out dividends because those companies see a need for more investment. Tesla is one of those companies. Tesla doesn’t pay dividends.
And then there are companies that fall into the trap of doing share buybacks and handing out dividends to constantly boost their share prices when they should really be trying to improve their companies. Pre-Banktrucpy GM was famously one of these companies, though it’s not the only example. There’s also been Washington Mutual, Barnes & Noble, Kodak and many others.
So, it was a huge disappointment to see GM announcing a $10 billion accelerated share repurchase and that the company is increasing its dividends at the end of the year by 33% to 12 cents per share. There’s a whole letter from GM CEO Mary Barra explaining how, with the UAW strike settled and a clearer understanding of profits this year, the company can hand out some money. Here’s the highlight:
Now, with clarity on our labor costs and production back on track, we are returning to our capital allocation framework by repurchasing $10 billion of common stock through an accelerated share repurchase program, raising our common stock dividend by 33% starting in 2024 and reinstating our 2023 earnings guidance.
Cool, but what about all the stuff that’s not working?
Although I am disappointed with our Ultium-based EV production in 2023 due to difficulties with battery module assembly, we have made substantial improvements both to the process and to the organization responsible for this work. In 2024, we expect significantly higher Ultium EV production and significantly improved EV margins. We are also addressing challenges at Cruise.
What Cruise has accomplished in the eight years since we acquired the company is remarkable. Our priority now is to focus the team on safety, transparency and accountability. We must rebuild trust with regulators at the local, state and federal levels, as well as with the first responders and the communities in which Cruise will operate.
I mean, what do I know, right? I’m just some schlub with a computer who doesn’t have to sit in a C-Suite and deal with angry investors. I actually worked in the Mortgage Back Securities industry on the back-end in 2005 and 2006 and saw that the whole thing made no sense and left the finance world in disgust, but I wasn’t smart enough to try to buy insurance like the people in “The Big Short” and make myself rich. If you can’t do, teach, and if you can’t teach I guess blog.
The world is a complex place and Barra deserves credit for winding her way through difficult times and restoring some faith in the company. But this is a huge step backward in my mind (and I‘m not the only one who thinks this is weird). Yes, the company’s truck and SUV business is very profitable and I also think their new EVs look very good, but if I were a GM shareholder I’d want them to invest as much as possible in hybrids and fixing their Ultium production. It’s nice that GM will be profitable this year and that the strike is only going to cost about a billion dollars, but in what universe does GM not need every cent to survive a future with Chinese automakers expanding in Mexico and Tesla showing no signs of slowing down?
This is cynical, but I suppose I should point out that this will almost certainly boost GM’s stock price (it has so far this morning) and, in 2022, Mary Barra was paid $2.1 million in salary and $14.6 million in stock options. Do with that information what you will.
Capitalism, when it’s done well, is ultimately a balancing act between the present and the future. What are you willing to do to make today survivable and how much will that harm your ability to survive in the future?
I’m not in GM’s C-Suite. I have no special insight or sources into what’s going on in the minds of executives and it’s possible that there’s enough pressure from the Board of Directors and from shareholders to provide immediate value and it’s just what the COO and CEO and executives have decided needs to be done to keep the stock price high enough to live another day.
Maybe. But I’ve seen this before and, while GM is not in 2007-era bad shape, tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone, and the company better hope that Ultium and Cruise are all buttoned up and there are enough resources to keep the company alive through all the unpredictability of the future.
The Blazer Is The MotorTrend SUV Of The Year?
Here’s another line from that Mary Barra letter that caught me off guard:
As the EV market grows, we will have an exceptional, purpose-built electric vehicle line-up that is designed to win with customers. These include the Chevrolet Blazer EV, just named 2024 MotorTrend SUV of the Year, milestone vehicles like the Chevrolet Silverado EV, Chevrolet Equinox EV and the Cadillac OPTIQ, and a host of others in a wide variety of segments.
Excuse me? That underlined bit was a surprise to me.
The Chevy Blazer EV is the SUV of the Year? Technically, you can buy a Blazer EV. And maybe you should! I haven’t driven it and, after this episode of The Morning Dump, maybe I’ll never get the chance, but MotorTrend thinks it’s very good and they are excellent at evaluating cars.
Here’s what they said:
Much more than an enlarged Bolt EV, the Blazer EV is far more viable for the needs of individuals and families everywhere. It’s not just because it establishes Chevrolet, once again, as a serious force in the EV space. Nor can its excellence be pinned on novel powertrain solutions or slick design details. It’s how these factors combine with overall product excellence that makes the Blazer EV our SUV of the Year.
I’m sorry, I can’t with this. The car looks really good and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a great car. I was just driving around last night with my buddy in his newly purchased used Bolt I convinced him to buy and it’s an awesome product.
But the amount of credit given to GM here is way too high. Here’s a bit that really bugs me:
General Motors has already introduced a few vehicles on the Ultium platform,” Detroit editor Alisa Priddle said, “but this is the one where it applied lessons learned from the others—and even the Bolt EV—and created a winner.”
There are EV Blazers for sale and I am sure that, eventually, GM will get production rolling and it’s even smart of the company to make sure the cars will work before they sell them. But they haven’t yet and I don’t see a lot of mentions of Ultium delays in this write-up. I mean, look at the GM-supplied caption from that photo above. Spring 2023!
Even if you grant that Blazer EV sales are happening and that GM is being smart and prudent here, the main issue with electric car adoption is affordability and another $50-60,000 EV doesn’t solve this issue. I’m looking forward to the Equinox EV and I’m hoping the company can deliver that car at a reasonable price.
Of MotorTrend‘s criteria for judging these things, value is only one pillar of evaluation, but a Model Y starts at like $44k and the Blazer costs a lot more. Also, it’s MotorTrend‘s award and it’s ultimately meaningless so who cares? I do, obviously. [Ed Note: Automakers do, too. When I was at Chrysler, I recall the brands making a big deal of such awards. -DT]. So MotorTrend is the real winner here.
Am I being too cynical here? I don’t know. But until GM can show they can actively make a lot of these things at scale and can bring down the price I’m a little confused by this call.
The Nissan Leaf Is Going To Reportedly Be A Crossover/SUV
Apparently, Nissan’s Chill-Out concept was a preview of the new Nissan Leaf and, yeah, sure.
Nissan will tap into European tastes for crossovers with the next-generation Leaf in a styling shift it hopes will significantly boost demand.
The Leaf compact EV is the first of three high-riding, battery-electric cars that Nissan will build for European markets at its factory in Sunderland, England. It will be followed by an electric replacement for the Juke small EV, expected in 2025, and the next Qashqai, which is likely due around 2027.
The next Leaf will launch at the end of next year, a source at Nissan told Automotive News Europe. Nissan has not revealed an official launch date.
Make The Leaf Great Again! Or, maybe, Make The Leaf Great For The First Time.
Jeep Recalls 32,000 Wrangler 4Xes Over Fire Risk
The Jeep Wrangler 4xe is the best-selling plug-in hybrid in America and that’s funny to me. It is. I’m not going to explain it, but I say it with love. I’m a 4xe fan.
Bad news from Consumer Reports if you’re an owner of one, however:
In a statement, the automaker says: “The vehicles may be driven. However, the company is advising owners to refrain from recharging these hybrid vehicles, and to park them away from structures and other vehicles, until they are remedied.”
Stellantis has identified eight fires with parked vehicles. In six of those cases, the Wrangler 4xe was connected to electric chargers.
The fix is a software update, and only 1 percent of the recalled group is estimated to have the problem.
So, that’s not ideal, but the good news I guess is that I’ve seen a ton of 4xes and I’ve never actually seen one plugged in.
The Big Question
Am I wrong? Am I wrong about the SUV of the Year thing? Am I wrong about GM? I could be wrong. It happens.
I stopped taking Motor Trend seriously when they fully bought into Chrysler’s marketing hype about the PT Cruiser being some sort of class defying vehicle, and they went on to question of it was an SUV, a van, a station wagon etc.
Chrysler designed it on purpose to meet criteria as a “light truck” for emissions and fuel economy loop holes.
It is just like Dodge Rams…
Why does it have to be stockholder pressure?
She and all the other a-holes around her are compensated mainly on the price of the stock. Her announcement alone has raised the stock price, and stock buybacks will raise it further.
If you gave me the keys to the Give Yourself a Raise Machine, I’d probably fire that baby up now and again.
I will never understand the insatiable greed of people who have enough money to keep generations of heirs in splendor, yer thirst for more. I guess that’s why I am not rich.
In other words, you’re a good person.
Greed is good too.
you have to have that mindset to get to the top, and you can’t turn it off and chill once you get there.
Other than the big dip at the start of the lockdown, and well after the huge spike when GM was contracted to build ventilators not long after, at that sweet, sweet Federal markup, the stock price now appears to be a good value buy. Particularly with the extra dividend juice and looking at its 10-year price history.
GM is gonna be fine. They’ll build “good enough” cars and will be protected by either subsidies for new tech or through more isolationist/anti-globalist policies. The days of making hay only with your own balance sheet are long gone.
[Removed For Being Weird, Don’t Do That]
I’m sure there’s probably not a lot of them, but the rinky-dinky little Chevy dealership I work at in a podunk western Pennsylvania town has an EV Blazer for sale (and the GMC dealer across town has an EV Hummer, I found out the other day). I’m looking at it as I type this, actually. It’s sitting on a parking pad right in front of the parts department; a white RS model. Let me tell you, this thing is sharp in person, and fuck me is it quick. The “fuel door” (power door? electron door?) is motorized and touch oriented, which is neat (and will undoubtedly shit the bed in droves across the country), but when we were playing with it we found out that if the sensor to close it gets wet it will just open and close in an endless loop until you wipe it off lol.
Honestly, it’s a really, really nice vehicle. Is it SUV of the year nice? I dunno, I guess MotorTrend would know better than me. It’s a shame that no one around here will buy it, for various reasons, not the least of which is damn near nowhere to charge the thing.
Other than quick, how does it handle & drive? What’s steering feedback like? Does it carry the battery mass well, or does it remind you of an old Suburban? Sorry to deluge questions. I definitely appreciate you chiming in because it’s great to hear actual experience here
I didn’t really get to put it through it’s paces as much as I would have liked; basically just piddled around town in it for a minute, but I’ll give my opinion as much as I can. The steering felt nice and responsive, and in all honesty pretty similar to it’s ICE counterpart. To me it didn’t really feel heavier or anything like that. It does feel wide to me though, but I’ll be the first to admit that my scope on what’s wide is more narrow than most people’s. The brakes were touchy, but that’s gonna be basically anything brand new. It’s fairly comfortable, and for what I did with it, it rode quite nicely. I felt like the forward visibility was really good, and on the side not too bad. The side rear I felt like left something to be desired for those of us who are a quick-glance-over-the-shoulder type lane changer. It feels hella roomy inside, and there are some actual HVAC control buttons so you can get your tactile fix. The display was nice for what it is, though full digital isn’t really my cup of tea. What are you gonna do though. It’s not like you have to monitor the oil pressure, you know?
All told, if I A) could afford it, B) had a modicum of charging infrastructure near me, and C) was in the market for an SUV, I’d definitely be keeping an eye out for the 2nd and 3rd year models. Like I said, it’s a really, really nice vehicle.
Cool. Thanks much: I’m not a hater and would prefer GM succeeds in building things we want to drive
I would too, but as someone else in the comments said, “if GM can GM then GM will GM” and truer words were never spoken
Literally nodded, then shook head & sighed
Your userame is excellent, my dad drove a 1979 Delta 88.
My friends had a 98 2 door Blazer and 2000ish Brevada twin.
The whole interior rattled since they were new. Harsh, uncomfortable suspension, anemic engine, loud wind noise.
No thanks. Blazers suck
That’s like saying you wouldn’t buy a Mustang because your friend once got bitten by a wild horse. The name is literally the only thing that’s the same between the two.
In the confusing mess that is corporate america, one thing can be easily missed. Shareholders own the companies. Do you have a 401K? You probably are part owner of GM (I wouldn’t start moving into the C-Suite just yet, however). Making money for the shareholders is what corporations exist to do. Period. Full stop. They have no other purpose for existing, not matter what their marketing departments tell you. GM is paying dividends to make the shareholders happy, and if you have a 401K, you probably just got a piece of the pie (in most cases, dividends are reinvested in retirement accounts).
Let’s not pretend that your average 401K holder benefits in a way that is even remotely meaningful compared to execs and uber wealthy people who own large amounts of individual company stock.
Dividends and buybacks are market manipulation designed to enrich equity-holding executives. They are bad for the company and bad for the economy.
buybacks are money that could be spent on R&D, which provides greater long-term monetary and practical (better tech in your life) benefits.
Mary Barra is OLD OLD OLD guard at GM; she’s been there for over 40 years. Of course they were going to go into their old shitty practices. Dividends on company stock should not even be legal. How does holding stock of a company impact it’s ability to be profitable? They did no output for the company. No, stock price does not intrinsically impact day to day operations. It DOES because people like Barra are insistent on stock price as opposed to long term reinvestment into the company. Wouldn’t those dividends be better spent on EV technology investment? Yes, yes they would.
I don’t have a problem with dividends. When you’re buying a company’s stock, you are buying a small ownership stake in that company. If the company is doing well, it makes sense for its owners to reap those proceeds.
It’s buybacks whose utility is much more questionable and seem to be done only to boost a company’s stock price in the short term.
I am not an individual stock investor and, as such, haven’t done the research on whether it makes sense for GM to send out that $10B in the form of dividends to investors rather than to pour it back into R&D. That said, it feels like the money would be better spent developing new products and technologies considering the rapid pace of advancement in the automotive space right now.
I feel like the larger scale of the company, the weirder dividends become. Outside of an IPO, how does ownership of stock increase GM’s ability to make a profit? Buying existing shares, the money doesn’t go to GM. You’re not investing in the profit making of GM by buying stock post IPO. It’s a bet not an investment in a company. Contrary to small business, when you become part owner, that goes into the company to help make it more profit; of course you should get a reward.
Maybe (probably) I’m too dumb to understand or am just flat out wrong.
I get where you’re coming from. Why should GM the company care about a bunch of stockholders who bought their shares from other stockholders who bought from other stockholders and on and one a long way away from their IPO? Why does keeping them happy matter for the company?
The answer is: Those stockholders are the company. They elect the board of directors who appoints the CEO. They vote on major company decisions. They are the owners.
Again, I stick to index funds and don’t invest in individual companies, so I’m not too well-versed on dividends, but here’s my understanding:
When you get down to it, operating a big business is similar to operating a small one (though the axiom of the great philosopher Notorious B.I.G. applies: Mo Money Mo Problems). At the end of an operating year, when the business brings in more than it spends, the owners have a few choices on what to do with the surplus: They could invest it into growing the business. They could save it in cash (or their own investments) to better survive down-years. Or they could keep it for themselves. (And, of course, they could do a combination of all three, and I expect that some of GM’s revenue is absolutely going into R&D.).
And I’ll flip your question on you: Why would an investor want to buy a company’s stock if it didn’t pay dividends?
The answer is that the investor expects the stock price to rise… but essentially the stock price rises when a company grows. Contrary to what the VCs in Silicon Valley tell you, every company doesn’t necessarily need to be in a constant state of exponential growth. At some point, a company gets as big as it can reasonably grow and can maintain profitability at its current size.
It is reasonable to me to envision a company that is satisfied with its current scale paying dividends to its owners when it’s doing well rather than focusing on growth or other internal development. Whether GM is in such a state is open to debate.
The gain should be in the stock value alone which should be increased by the reinvestment of profits to make a better product rather than sharing of profits that the purchase of a share had no impact on. But again, I’m not well versed in this stuff. So, I have no idea of the ramifications of what I want. I just like to parse processes and problems and think about them differently.
GM is about 100 years old. It’s probably not going to grow a heck of a lot and it has plenty of money and talent to build profitable new cars. They may or may not be your cup of tea, as an enthusiast or just someone who needs transportation, but they are competitive on the US and world market. GM makes seven bucks for every share outstanding, which is very good. So as you might expect, great grandpa or grandma throws a few cents of its earnings (36 to be exact) to the grandkids to stay relevant. Otherwise they may abandon the family and invest in something like, I don’t know, AI or non-fungible tokens or Tesla or Netflix, etc., etc., depending on their tolerance to risk.
Of course, grandpa/grandma being a smart old cookie waited for this strike business to finish before splashing the money around. Buying back a little of the company for themselves sweetened the deal for the grandkids as well.
This is my point: Buying someone elses stock isn’t investing in the companies ability to make a profit, so why should they get profit sharing? Yeah yeah, if you own stock you’re an “owner” but not at all in the sense of being an owner of a small business in which you invested cash into the operations of the company in order to make a profit; of course that person should get a profit share.
Look, I get my angle is very different than the norm and status quo, but that’s the point. Our system is at least breaking and at worst already broken.
someone paid GM a money at their IPO for a portion of GM’s future value. You pay them for that future value. Therefore you’re entitled to dividends.
They are at least 10 years behind the EV market. They’ve never had a successful hybrid. They just got caught up with China and had to shit can a battery plant. If not for Covette and Trucks, they’d be dead again. So, while they’re not my cup of tea and never will be, what they’re doing well at is not the future anyways. They are right back to where they were pre 2008/9. Badge engineering for the sucker baby boomers.
I am a sucker baby boomer and own two pedestrian Chevys, which are really well built and have a lot of electronic doodads to keep my aging self on the road…I’m not arguing with you, just identifying myself. We aren’t all dead and buy a lot of cars.
As far as growth or potential growth is concerned, the stock market pays for growth. A share of Tesla stock costs 77 times the company’s earnings. A share of GM stock costs 4.5 times the company’s earnings.
You might argue that GM is behind in its products and that might not be wrong. But they are a profitable company and if you are going to buy a piece of a company, you might decide to park your money in GM for its ability to make a profit and pay a dividend. Obviously, GM management is trying to bolster its share price, because there are benefits to both the shareholders and company for doing so.
Full disclosure: I don’t have any shares in GM, but do have shares of other individual companies, including auto companies.
I’m not arguing either, so I’m glad we’re capable of enthusiastic discussion without conflict.
I probably shouldn’t have called boomers (you!) suckers but I was riled up. I definitely did not expect you to be a boomer let alone be driving GM product. I don’t think you specifically are a sucker, you bought the right thing, a pedestrian chevy, instead of a different badge engineered profit maker coming out of GM just like 2007.
I’m sure someone will say they’re not badge engineered, yeah, they are even worse. It’s the same car with different sheet metal which costs even more to execute than just swapping badges. Just make a midsize SUV that’s really really good. Don’t make 5 different flavors of the same thing.
Right, so, why is Tesla valued so differently? Tesla doesn’t pay dividends, they make 4-5 cars that cover the bulk of the market, they reinvest their profits, and sell vastly fewer cars than GM. That recipe CAN lead to growth, but it also leads to insane profit on the same amount of revenue. One could argue that’s growth, but in my head growth means more revenue, more customers, more everything, not just more profit. We have a different metric for that; profit margin. I don’t think high profit margin necessarily means you WILL grow. You COULD, but SHOULD you. IMO they are valued so high because people see their profitability potential leading to the increase in stock price. People are making money off Tesla the way I said previously; on the capital gain of the stock not the dividend.
If GM can’t grow anymore, maybe they should figure out profitability instead of pump and dump to keep shareholders happy.
The Nissan Leaf Is Going To Reportedly Be A Crossover/SUV
Can we all just agree that we’ve crossed over already? It’s been two decades. I think we’re on the other side of the SUV transition. This term has run its course.
I’m all for the next gen Leaf getting a lift. However I hope they don’t ditch air cooling for the next generation. The Leaf arguably has the best preforming battery setup for freezing temps. The same setup but with a lift, AWD, and cooling fans and you’d be doing pretty well for pretty cheap.
Really the only thing keeping me from getting a current gen Leaf is the lack of a physical key.
A co-worker has a Wrangler 4XE. He plugs it into the free charging at work every day.
Well, the odds seem good—but I wouldn’t park next to him (unless you have great insurance & want an upgrade?)
We have 10 chargers next to the front door. Only electric/PHEV are allowed to park there. our new building has been occupied for 2 years now. In that time one manager drove a bolt and one manager has the Wrangler. The guy with the Bolt retired last month, so the Jeep is all by itself, currently.
It’s about time Nissan turned over a new Leaf.
“Make The Leaf Great Again!”
Wrong horse, buddy. Please don’t do this to me again. Please edit that out.
“of the year” has always been an issue in that only new or significantly remodeled are often the only ones eligible. Often with the “of the year” there are better ones from last model year.
Those models were eligible for “car of the year” award at their time. Different models are eligible for 2024.
Did they win those awards back then when they were new designs?
It is good this way if one is looking for fresh models. Do you want Challengers, Charges, 300s, Tacomas, Nissan Altimas and Infinities designed 20 years ago to be eligible every year?
Matt, I think you may have figured it out.
For years I’ve disliked GM products, its like they cornered the market on blindspots and just been shoving it into every car they have. I’ve always wondered why.
Its because they have no hindsight, so they don’t need to look behind them.
Wow, this was a deep one! COTD.
“he broke the mirrors off his Cadillac, ’cause he doesn’t like it looking like he looks back”
Motortrend has been the at the bottom of the automotive journalism barrel for a long time. They’re not an enthusiast publication in any capacity. They’re a bunch of normies doing surface-level analysis on NPC mobiles with an environmentalist agenda. There’s nothing objective about the award and there really never has been.
They need to just make them the “electrified (X) of the year” awards at this point. Don’t get me wrong-I’m someone who’s conscious of their carbon footprint, believes wholeheartedly in climate change, and is generally pro electrification. But this shit is just getting laughable. They literally just hand the award out to the shiniest new EV or hybrid every single year at this point and flat out refuse to even begin to acknowledge some of the compromises that come with EVs.
Okay, but here’s the inevitable question: What would you have given the award to?
I’m not saying that MT is right or wrong here, just wondering what the viable alternative is this year.
Off the top of my head the Mazda CX90 comes to mind, and it’s electrified which seems to be mandatory. Apparently the new Pilot is pretty sweet and offers what’s essentially Acura’s SH-AWD system. I forget if the newest CRV hit this year or last but that thing is a damn fine appliance. The Grand Highlander and Lexus TX seem like pretty compelling products as well.
I think you kind of answered yourself that everything you listed is fairly appliancey or just compelling – great new NPC mobiles, very good updates to existing formulas but not that notable otherwise. Even the CX-90, which MT isn’t as Mazda lovey as some other rags but driving capability isn’t enough when it’s still apparently a bit small for the segment.
And in looking at the contenders, it was heavy on refreshes and facelifts. Not to say the Blazer only won because it’s the only thing new, from their writeup it seems to be more “EV but more normal” which I can’t say I necessarily disagree with when I think about it. To go along with that, seems like they tend to shy away from premium brands especially more recently for the awards. Not that the Blazer is cheap, but relative to the market; because then it’s “oh of course they picked the vehicle thats more than most people’s income.” But, you can’t please all of the people all of the time anyway.
Personally I think the Trax is more notable as a smartly priced and packaged vehicle, and it was a finalist but the lack of AWD for an SUV award seemed to pick it off. Toyota is typically too cautious to win the awards, but did win MT COTY, and that seems like a smart pick.
That’s why I like MotorTrend. I want to read about cars I might drive someday. Articles like “We get some track time in our new Pagani!” do nothing for me — although MT still has plenty of that stuff too, even in 2023. But their car testing regime is generally very robust and comprehensive, and that’s what I’m looking for.
I picked up a free copy of Road & Track at the auto show a couple of weeks ago, after not having read one for 10 years or more. The amazing thing is that it was all written like it was 10 years ago or more — just bad take after bad take (except for Jamie Kitman, who is always great). I guess it’s a good thing that the two magazines serve such different audiences.
Hair mildly smoldering over here. GM could darn well use that $10 billion to accelerate EV battery production.
In that graph of adoption, we’re in the valley where adoption of the new tech is lagging but nobody wants to buy into the old tech unless they have to. That takes money to ride out. Being all wishy-washy is a surefire way to go out of business.
“Too big to fail”
Don’t worry, we’ll just bail them out again.
You’re likely correct, unfortunately. If that does come to pass I’d love for Congress to claw back any stock related income from the executives. Base salary they can keep, but stock income needs to be repaid to the company.
Emotionally I love that, but intellectually I don’t. Change rules moving forward, but don’t penalize anyone following the law and taking advantage of a good contract. That could be us someday (never). Emotionally, I hated writing this whole comment, cause I really want the fuckers to pay.
I get where you’re coming from. It’s legal to exercise those options but ethically looks sketchy at this point in time.
$10 billion in new GM-branded Tesla chargers might help them sell more EVs, for example
I love Leaf. That not Leaf.
Motor Trend’s COTY awards don’t mean a whole lot. 10 Worst Cars To Receive The Car Of The Year Award
A lot of those make sense in context, and the Merkur was a great car marketed impressively poorly – look for Adrian’s excellent article on the Ford Sierra.
Though the Town Car is a head scratcher.
And we just had a XR4TI article. It was a good car, especially at the time.
Right, certainly some amusing to look back on how some award winners actually shook out in the market and real world, but such articles are just revisionist history and clickbait. Often even when it’s the very same publication putting it out.
I’m surprised that one doesn’t cite the ’91 Caprice winning MT COTY, that always seems to be a target on these lists. Some of them are just “nobody cared!” You want an award winner nobody cared about, the Mazda Navajo (the rebadged 2-door Explorer) won MT Truck OTY for ’91 and C/D had it on the cover saying “BIG DEAL!” And I know it seemed big at the time that an import brand was now rebadging a domestic vehicle when it had been the other way around for years, but I bet most have forgotten that the Navajo existed. C/D did poke fun of themselves years later saying “it was, in fact, a small deal.”
And a lot of the worst winners were cars that were very important on launch and could have been game changers if they weren’t, you know, built like a drunk person screwing together a shelf from Wal Mart. Like the Vega. GM is diving into the compact market? This is a huge deal, and the car hasn’t been out a year so the front fenders have barely started rusting!
Hell the Citations that were in press fleets were apparently excellent, meticulously examined to ensure top quality, they even had the heavy torque steer engineered out. Imagine if those were shipped to consumers! But instead we got the dumpster fires that were actually shipped.
Yeah, I could probably write an essay in defense of most of the award winners based on if things had gone as planned or intended, in a vacuum. Or even if it was something picked just on who had the biggest ad budget that year. And then yet another essay on why something else should have won. Pieces like the GM-hit-or-miss article segments here are way better discussion than listicles.
Exactly. I gave up on that award when the Vega won. As mentioned below, the car was potentially important but the awful quality of the build was immediately evident. No matter the concept, it’s ridiculous to give an award to a complete piece of crap. They haven’t all been that bad but once you lose trust, it turns into a “who cares” situation,.
And yeah, I have long memory for these things. 😉
What I’ve been wondering about GM lately: will it field the then-defunct Camaro as its NASCAR body next season (as it technically still can), or will it switch the Malibu to remind people it still actually makes it, or go with something else entirely?
The wildcard switch to NASCAR Cadillac hahaha
I bet they keep the same body shell and call it a Blazer EV.
Just for laughs I’d like to see a convertible Miata skin treatment applied to a NASCAR.
if GM can GM then GM will GM. They will shoot themselves in the foot at every opportunity because they are good engineers on the leashes of accountants. They know they can do stock buybacks and jack up prices and the new union contract and worker pay raises will get the blame.
GM was at one point 20 years ahead of the curve with its EV1. The EPA official range figures actually understated the car’s real-world range. 130-160 miles driven without any concern for efficiency was the reality, not the 105 miles quoted. Hypermiling it, 200+ miles range was possible. All of this on a mere 27 kWh.
None of GM’s current EV lineup is anywhere remotely as efficient as the EV1 of 3 decades ago. If they made the next Bolt a midsized sedan with aerodynamics slightly improved over the EV1(0.19 Cd), say comparable to its even more slippery Precept(0.16 Cd, and could be even lower without the rear cooling vents the Precept needed to cool the diesel generator), they could use a similarly-sized kWh LiFePO4 pack that loses hundreds of lbs over the EV1’s NiMH pack, keep the weight comparable to an EV1 while seating 4 or 5 and passing modern crash standards, use the higher-horsepower Blazer’s drive system, and potentially have a sub-$25k 200+ mile highway range EV that does 0-60 mph in under 4 seconds.
Yet, we just get bland crossovers, trucks, and SUVs that cost way too much and waste massive amounts of materials to accommodate their oversized batteries. I predict in the coming years the dealership lots are going to pile up with unsold inventory, and GM will demand yet ANOTHER bailout.
GM could not build a a 4-5 seat midsized EV sedan that weighs only 2,908 and still pass modern safety standards and have it cost under $25k, no one can, that’s pure fantasy land.
Yeah I was going to say the same thing. It would be nice, and were it possible it would be done. But it simply just isn’t legal to do with regulations as they are
The 2024 Honda Accord is at about 3,200 lbs, made with conventional materials. It is loaded with features that could be removed to cut mass. It is also a big car, and the proposal above would assume it shrinks slightly in dimensions to keep frontal area down. A 30 kWh pack of LiFePO4 batteries would weigh in around 320 lbs. The EV drive system is not only going to be lighter than an ICE, but it also doesn’t need a heavy transmission, or a driveshaft. A single speed ratio is all that’s needed.
Somewhere around 3,000 lbs is perfectly possible, as long as the car isn’t loaded with extraneous crap. Keep it simple and inexpensive.
This is perfectly reasonable. A Nissan Versa, while a bit of a POS, is spacious, cheap, and squeaks in just under 2600 pounds. Probably has a bit of an oversize frontal area, because the space is from height, but, the front could be reshaped a bit to at least help with a great Cd. The much nicer Elantra is just over 2700 pounds, and it makes pretty good highway fuel economy figures and is by all means a perfectly pleasant car.
The Mirage G4 is still on sale, meeting crash standards, and weighs just over 2000 pounds. Light cars are still possible. A ~$20k compact wagon with ~200 miles range would have even my cheap ass checking out the stock at the local dealership.
Something designed similarly to the Volvo LCP2000, except with an EV drive system. might do the trick on that.
Ok hear me out. Why can’t we have Kei car like cars in America with relaxed safety in order to make that $25K 4-5 seater? We already do this in rural areas with side by sides. Just let it be done in cities with enclosed 4 seaters that can only go like 50. It’s as if this whole EV push isn’t ACTUALLY about the environment. The average age of vehicles on the road is something like 12 years. How can we get people to buy new cars? Make the current cars they drive illegal! It’s bull shit.
A Kei car as described could probably be done for well under $10k.
Even better.
No way. Focus ST was $25000 compact car and it was the most expensive version of the Focus too.
Nobody is paying $25000 for something smaller than Fiesta subcompact.
I don’t really mean the SIZE of kei cars, but the more relaxed regulation for a specific set of vehicles; like side by sides in rural areas but for moving passengers in the city.
Then remove mandatory stuff for road legal car and sell it to recoup costs.
Sell air bags, ABS sensors, catalytic converter, windows, doors, fenders, hood, rear view mirrors, seatbelts… on ebay
They can but that would take away production volume from Silverado, Tahoe, Suburban, Hummer, Colorado which have larger profit margins.
When GM cancelled Spark, Impala, Regal, CT6, LaCrosee, Cascada, ATS, CTS, XTS, Cruze, Sonic take a guess what kind of vehicles were made in those factories?
They made more trucks with higher profit margins.
“and GM will demand yet ANOTHER bailout.”
And why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t anyone put their hands out if they know it will be filled with a pile of golden parachute $$$$$ instead of being painfully smacked with a cane?
Character, which they lack and that’s why the government needs to use the cane. I wasn’t against the bailout, but I was against the lack of accountability for those responsible for the need for it. Great compensation should come with great accountability.
And great fees. Preferably made mosly from the golden parachutes of those responsible.
The vast majority of investors are not Warren Buffet and Birkshire Hathaway. Long term gains is not how most play the market. They want their gains and they want them now. Who cares if it hurts the company long term, since you can just sell your shares and buy something else! So yeah, I’m sure the buybacks and dividends are fending off heavy weight investors.
That doesn’t directly make it a bad business decision though. Having an improved value in the market opens doors to better credit lines etc. The dividend isn’t necessarily funds diverted from investment in the future. It can easily just be CASH that isn’t invested in the future, but instead they will be using low rate debt to invest in themselves.
“Making shit is for suckers. Just inflate the stock price until you retire and everyone figures out your company is a hot air balloon.” – Jack Welch (probably)
They call this an SPAC 😀
That name was a curse of my youth. As was Nixon.
I was wondering about this. Does your stock price REALLY make borrowing easier? Increasing it by giving away money doesn’t seem like a logical path to better credit availability.
It does. i’m not arguing it makes perfect sense, or that there couldn’t be a better system in place by any means. While I so some investing and playing in the market, I still thinks its mostly gambling. Stocks aren’t actually worth anything but what we all agree they are worth. Thus the Gamespot short squeeze etc.
But yes, lenders give money at better rates to companies worth more, and companies whos stock price to “current value of sales” is better. Stocks in the company’s possession can be put up as collateral, so a great stock value means the bank is better guaranteed to recoup any unpaid amounts.
Understand. The more I learn about our system the more it’s a joke to me. But who am I.
I mean, the dealers have already stopped adding markup to them, at least around here. I still think the Equinox has the potential to be the real winner, but I can go to two local dealers and get a white Blazer EV today (why always the whites, blacks, and grays?). It is too expensive, but you can.
The rest of your judgement of GM is spot-on. Dividends and buybacks are not the place to be putting that money right now. They need to be investing that into future success.
You actually can buy a Blazer EV! In fact, it is showing up in EV hostile places like Saskatchewan. I saw one a couple weekends ago!
Personally I was very surprised. It also looks awkwardly long. I mean lots of cars are long but it carries its length like a car that they didn’t realize was going to be as long as it is.
If you’ve seen one, how would you say it compares to the Cadillac Lyriq? I saw a Lyriq for the first time yesterday, and was surprised how long it looked too.
I actually haven’t seen a Lyriq in person, so I don’t know how they compare in proportions.
I think it might be styling choices more than actual length – though 192 inches isn’t exactly short – but I thought it needed about a foot cut off in the back half.
Or styling that doesn’t emphasize length so much, that could also make it less awkward.
Lyriq is like 1st generation Equinox. It just does not look good/attractive/elegant but you cannot really figure out why it looks weird.
I was excited to see one driving and even ride in it at the Chicago Auto Show, and once I saw it we went for a ride at Jeeps area instead
I haven’t seen a Blazer in person but I think the Lyriq’s styling helps mask the length, so the Blazer will look longer despite being shorter by ~4 inches. The Honda Prologue is about the same length as the Blazer (192″) but I think it might not look quite as long either as the D-pillar is body colored, not a wraparound rear glass look as in the Blazer.
For all of them it’s the wheelbase that really changes the proportions, 121″ long is as long as a Chrysler minivan. I think we’ll see that more and more on purpose-built EVs, it’s almost like a new cab-forward look. The Hyundai Ioniq 5’s 118″ wheelbase is also more like an extended-length minivan but being 10″ shorter than the Blazer helps.
Man, with 10B in buybacks [they were planning all along], it sure makes their bluster about the unaffordability of labor look pretty pathetic. Not that I’m surprised at all. I figured that’s what they meant by they couldn’t afford to meet the unions demands (while also buying their own company back).
Time to go on strike again
Of course, the UAW, through various trusts, still owns about 10% of GM and is either their largest shareholder, or close to it, so they are also going to be a huge beneficiary of this announcement
(backs slowly away) No, my dude, you’re not wrong.
But srsly, the GM stock/dividend gambit feels like an attempt to head off potential “activist” shareholders trying to buy control of the company.