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Don't Look Now, but GM's EV Sales Are on Fire (msn.com) 33

GM's president of global markets says their EV portfolio "is growing faster than the market," according to Investopedia, "because we have an all-electric vehicle for just about everybody, no matter what they like to drive."

The headline at Barrons? "Don't Look Now, but GM's EV Sales Are on Fire." GM delivered almost 32,000 all-electric vehicles in the third quarter — a record — and up about 58% from a year earlier. The more affordable Chevy Equinox, which starts at about $35,000 before any federal tax credit, helped boost sales. GM delivered almost 10,000 of the new EVs, up from 1,013 in the second quarter, when they first went on sale.

EV penetration of total GM car sales was about almost 5%, up almost two percentage points year over year. EVs accounted for 19.4% of Cadillac sales, up about 11 percentage points year over year. Year to date, GM has delivered just over 70,000 all-electric cars.

GM originally planned to manufacture 200,000 EVs in 2024. That still looks aggressive, but the strong third-quarter showing makes 120,000 possible, which would be up almost 60% year over year — a respectable outcome. More important to investors than EV sales right now might be dealer inventories. GM said there were about 627,000 vehicles on dealer lots at the end of September. That's a little better than what Wolfe Research analyst Emmanuel Rosner expected. It indicates GM dealers have roughly 60 days worth of sales on their lots. That's a safe level. Lower dealer inventories reduce presure to reduce prices. They also reduce the need to cut production because dealer lots are full... GM expects to generate a full-year operating profit of about $14 billion.

Meanwhile, Stellantis "slashed its financial guidance recently, partly because it needs to dramatically reduce its U.S. inventories," according to the article. For example, its Jeep dealers ended August with roughly 122 days worth of sales on their lots, while its Dodge dealers "had almost 150 days of inventory."

And Investopedia argues that while GM's EV sales growth is "soaring," Ford's is showing "only modest gains." [W]hile Ford's overall U.S. sales were 0.7% higher at 504,039, it had just a 12% gain in EVs to 23,509.3 In the second quarter, Ford's EV sales had soared 61% to 23,957. Sales growth was more than three times higher for Ford's hybrid models, with President of Ford Blue and Ford Customer Service Division Andrew Frick arguing that the company has "listened to customers to offer them vehicles with powertrains to meet their specific needs."

Ford is hoping to boost EV sales by offering buyers a free home charger and installation.

Don't Look Now, but GM's EV Sales Are on Fire

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  • would not say that their EV sales are "on fire".

    • "We updated the safety guidelines and production at our explosives factory went through the roof".

  • The latter for sure ðYðY
  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday November 02, 2024 @07:06PM (#64915191)

    Well I guess all those predictions from way back about all the big automakers eating Tesla's lunch will finally come true.

    Of course you don't read much about how much margin they make selling those EVs. As far as I can tell the only companies to actually make money selling EVs are Tesla and BYD.

    • They waited too long to eat Tesla's lunch, and now the only form of its lunch they can eat is its shit.
    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Well I guess all those predictions from way back about. Tesla Stans moving the goalposts will also finally come true.

      " As far as I can tell the only companies to actually make money selling EVs are Tesla and BYD."

      One of those, not for long. The other actually makes cars.

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday November 02, 2024 @07:29PM (#64915229)

    I know you people don't like autonomous self driving cars. But the prospect of autonomous is what generates the excitement and fans for Tesla. Will Tesla actually have full self driving? Who knows? Who cares!! (note. they are actually quite close). But it's irrelevant, the point is that Tesla cares about making full self driving cars. The cars have an advanced AI chips and 8 cameras. GM cars do not. That reflects in the low enthusiasm for GM cars. GM spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising, Tesla buys little to no advertising. They don't even have a PR department. GM isn't doing anything cool. Tesla is working making cars drive themselves. On building the factory of the future. On making robots. GM isn't doing anything exciting. If they are (which they aren't) the millions they spend own advertising is a waste. Tesla is doing things that people talk about and are excited about.

    • I was in a tesla with the self-driving activated, just last year. It worked awesome, 99.5% of the time. That means that the driver only needed to intervene twice, in a 10-mile suburban route, to prevent an accident.

      That’s not good enough. Not even close. I’ll accept self-driving when the car is at least as good as I am - which means one accident every 20 years. Until then, it’s a hard no for me - I’ll stick with the more reliable system (the human).

      Waymo’s cars seem to
      • I really think Elon is putting Tesla in mortal danger by dropping the anticipated low-cost model and putting everything on the self-driving car. I simply don't think Tesla is close. It's like you said, 99.9 sounds close to 99.9999, but it's actually nowhere near! Waymo started offering truly driverless rides in 2019, and Tesla cannot do that in 2024. And yes I know Waymo still requires some intervention. But Tesla is simply falling further behind by refusing to acknowledge they will need that too, and g
    • I would be very happy if a fully autonomous car is available for my mom in the next five years, since she may need it if she wants to keep "driving"... but I can't say I'm gonna make any personal buying decisions based on that, because I don't particularly care about it myself, one way or the other. I do find the more advanced cruise control options helpful, but those have been widely available for a while.

      However any Telsa fan's comment on how close they are to full self-driving needs to be taken with a ve

    • I don't know how exciting I want my car to be. I have a Malibu and my whole family really likes it, including me. Nice size, drives nice, fine power, and basic services and repairs are easy to do and parts are cheap. It's a 2014 and has no touchscreen display. It's not the most exciting but it's not a dog, and not flimsy, or overly gee-whiz.

      I'd like an electric car like that!

    • Re:Why GM failed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday November 02, 2024 @08:13PM (#64915303) Journal

      I know you people don't like autonomous self driving cars

      I think you misread "skepticism that the technology works as promised to be "don't like self-driving cars."

      Fully autonomous self-driving cars would be amazing, but the current capability has been massively overhyped. Apparently you think Tesla is quite close, for some reason.

  • can't beat that if it continues...

    My abuse of statistics can beat yours any day of the week.

  • Sales are nice but profits are even better and GM isn't making any on EVs. Yet.
    • Profits are nice for GM, not for the rest of us. As long as GM doesn't go out of business, I don't care if their stockholders are making money.
      • If they are not making profits, they cannot invest, so they have to lay off and close the very EV factories that were intended to build 35,000 vehicles every fortnight, not have them sitting in lots being sold below market value just to get them off the lot.

    • Tesla didn't make any money on their cars for many years, it takes time to ramp up.

      "GM is about to start making money on its electric vehicles by the end of this year, right on schedule, CEO Mary Barra told The New York Times."
      https://www.theverge.com/2024/... [theverge.com]

  • by habig ( 12787 ) on Saturday November 02, 2024 @08:34PM (#64915321) Homepage

    Mostly

    They made an almost affordable (certainly cheaper than the competition) car with decent range

    So of course they'll sell more. And even if they're not making profit on it, they'll establish themselves as the "go-to" brand for the regular guy. That's always been Chevy's niche. Then profit once volume is up and costs are down.

    • $33,000 for a range of 315 miles. Also has a really nice looking design, but of course that's an opinion.

      https://www.chevrolet.com/elec... [chevrolet.com]
    • They already closed factories and laid off the people in these segments. The only reason they are moving is they are being sold well under value and a quarter of it is paid by the government. Go look at the dealership, they are currently selling the same model that was at $50k this summer for $33k, they are sitting on the dealer lots and they need to make room for next models, it is a huge loss and unlikely to continue once GM stops getting funding from the government to build them.

  • They don't have a minivan. They don't have any sedan. They only have 2 SUV (one small and one medium) and a pick-up truck. They no longer sell the Bolt.

  • GM: Market Cap £43.07 Billion
    GM: Net income 3.06B
    GM: Net profit margin 6.27%

    Tesla: Market Cap 780.17 Billion
    Tesla: Net income 2.17B
    Tesla: Net profit margin 8.61%

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