Tag: GM

ChargePoint raises $240 million to serve an anticipated flood of electric vehicles

Electric vehicle charging network ChargePoint has raised $240 million in a Series H funding round that attracted a diverse group of investors from the automotive, energy, financial, venture capital, utilities, and even oil and gas industries. New investors in the round include American Electric Power, Chevron Technology Ventures, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Daimler Trucks… Continue reading ChargePoint raises $240 million to serve an anticipated flood of electric vehicles

AFL-CIO worries GM job cuts are a ‘smokescreen for offshoring’

AFL-CIO’s policy director on General Motor’s decision to lay off thousands
4 Hours Ago | 05:13

The AFL-CIO labor union is worried that General Motors' decision this week to halt production at several factories and cut thousands of jobs in the U.S. could be a pretext for sending work outside the country where labor costs are significantly cheaper.

“This situation is really about whether or not GM is going to put new work into these plants or whether this is a smoke screen for offshoring work,” AFL-CIO policy director, Damon Silvers said on CNBC's Power Lunch.

GM was not immediately available for comment. The automaker said Monday it will begin phasing out the production of several vehicles at a number of factories in the United States and Canada.

GM has said it is cutting production of these vehicles in part because they are slow-selling, but Silvers said GM recently decided to start making the Chevrolet Blazer SUV in Mexico, rather than the plant in Lordstown, Ohio that it plans to wind down.

GM has a “particularly bad history” compared with Ford and Chrysler of looking to move jobs off shore he said.

Successful auto companies worldwide pay decent wages and benefits to high-skilled workers, Silvers said.

“The bottom feeders do things like exploit $2-an-hour wages, which is what GM pays in some of its factories in Mexico,” he said. “What we want them to do is to be in a first tier strategy that really takes advantage of the skills and capacity … of America's workers and America's communities.”

GM to add third vehicle to Spring Hill plant, despite sweeping $6 billion cost-cutting plan – The Tennessean

CLOSE With three major auto manufacturing plants and nearly 1,000 auto suppliers scattered across the state, Tennessee has emerged as the primary driver behind the Southeast’s fast-growing automotive industry. Buy Photo A worker places engines into Cadillac XT5 and GMC Acadia vehicles Feb. 14 at the General Motors plant in Spring Hill. A future Cadillac… Continue reading GM to add third vehicle to Spring Hill plant, despite sweeping $6 billion cost-cutting plan – The Tennessean

15 Hurdles To The Industrialization Of Driverless Cars (Part 1 Of 3) – Forbes

Photocredit: GettyGetty Will the future of driverless cars rhyme with the history of the Segway? The Segway personal transporter was also predicted to revolutionize transportation. Steve Jobs gushed that cities would be redesigned around the device. John Doerr said it would be bigger than the Internet. The Segway worked technically but never lived up to its backers’ outsized hopes for market… Continue reading 15 Hurdles To The Industrialization Of Driverless Cars (Part 1 Of 3) – Forbes

Canada PM, Trump discuss GM shutdown, express disappointment -Ottawa

OTTAWA, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday and both men expressed their disappointment about plans by General Motors to shut down auto plants, a senior Canadian official told reporters. “They underscored their concerns for the workers, for the communities and for the families that… Continue reading Canada PM, Trump discuss GM shutdown, express disappointment -Ottawa

Ex-GM CEO: Factory closures are decided by the consumer, not the White House

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Cadillac's emblem is displayed on the front of a Cadillac ATS Coupe in Detroit.

General Motors' decision to essentially stop production at five factories in North America and eliminate roughly 14,700 jobs wasn't a political one, despite pressure from leaders in Washington and Canada to reverse course, said former CEO Dan Akerson.

GM's current CEO Mary Barra took some heat from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said Monday that the automaker should put another factory in Ohio, where it plans to wind down production of one plant after 2019. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was disappointed the company will no longer produce vehicles at a plant in Ontario. The United Auto Workers labor union also said it will fight GM's decision.

The shares dipped in afternoon trading Tuesday after Trump said he was looking at cutting all of GM's subsidies. It's shares were down by 2.9 percent.

But GM is simply doing what it can to maximize its efficiency and prepare for a still uncertain future in the automotive industry, Akerson said on CNBC's “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday. Its choice to shift production away from factories that make cars and to make better-selling and more profitable SUVs, trucks and crossover vehicles is simply responding to market forces.

Car sales have dropped, in just five or six years, from representing 50 to 60 percent of the market to 20 to 30 percent of the market.

“This isn't a choice that is being made in the Oval Office or the board room or on the factory floor. They are being made around the kitchen table,” said Akerson, who served as GM's CEO from 2010 to 2014. “Fundamentally, the industry is oversupplied right now. GM's plants are running at about 70 to 71 percent capacity. You can't make money and produce cash to fund future ambitions, moves that I think are necessary to position the company for the long term.”

In the past, the company was far more reluctant to make these tough choices to secure its future, and suffered for it, he said.

“These decisions weren't made back in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the inevitable came to pass, and the company went into bankruptcy,” he said.

Now a new generation of consumers is becoming more influential in the market, and they appear to have different buying habits and an unprecedented interest in other types of mobility products and services, such as ride-sharing.

“Right now, GM is trying to change,” he said. “They're looking for a couple more cards, trying to show more flexibility, trying to free up cash flow in the future so they can play the electric game, so they can play the shared ownership game, and it is critically important that the company position itself while it is healthy, not in a crisis.”

Salaried-worker layoffs will cut deep at GM

Salaried-worker layoffs will cut deep at GMGeneral Motors Co. will likely have to lay off nearly 6,000 salaried workers after roughly 2,250 employees requested to take the buyout the Detroit automaker offered to North American salaried employees and global executives last month.
The number of employees who asked to take the buyout was outlined in a portion of a memo to employees from CEO Mary Barra, obtained by The Detroit News. GM said Monday it was targeting 8,000 jobs with the buyouts, a benchmark the company will now have to meet with about 5,750 layoffs.
Managers from each department were given cost-cutting goals to meet by the end of the year, which could be met by addressing discretionary spending or leveraging buyouts. The managers still have to approve the buyout requests from their employees before GM knows exactly how many employees it needs to lay off.
The automaker offered buyouts to 18,000 salaried workers on Halloween, and the deadline to accept the offer was last week.
Under GM's buyout offer, eligible employees could receive six months' pay and six months' health care coverage starting in February, though on a case-by-case basis some employees could leave before the end of the year to effectively get eight months' compensation.
The expected layoffs come as GM is also planning to stop production at five plants next year, including Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly and Warren Transmission, affecting about 14,300 jobs across the company.
The buyouts and layoffs among GM's salaried workers are part of what the automaker has called a transformation of its workforce. At the same time GM executes some 6,000 layoffs among salaried workers, it is hiring aggressively in emerging automotive disciplines like software development, batter and fuel cell technology and autonomous vehicle development.
GM Cruise LLC, the automaker's self-driving vehicle development arm based in San Francisco, recently surpassing 1,000 workers. A new office in Seattle opening early next year will also add up to 200 new workers.
“We are going to continue to hire,” Barra told reporters Monday. She says GM is focusing harder on the “skillsets of the future”
“You will see us having new employees join the company as others are leaving,” she said. “We still need many technical resources across the company.”
Staff Writer Ian Thibodeau contributed to this report
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Ford Canada CEO says firm has no plans for GM-style auto plant shutdown

OTTAWA, Nov 26 (Reuters) – Ford Motor Co has no plans to carry out an auto plant shutdown in Canada along the lines of the closure announced by General Motors Co, the head of the automaker’s Canadian operation said on Monday. “(We have) no plans to do anything like that,” Mark Buzzell, president and chief… Continue reading Ford Canada CEO says firm has no plans for GM-style auto plant shutdown

VW to invest $50B in electric and autonomous tech

VW to invest $50B in electric and autonomous techFrankfurt, Germany – Volkswagen AG, which is negotiating investments and tie-ups with Ford Motor Co., intends to invest 44 billion euros ($50 billion) in the electric and autonomous car technologies expected to reshape the industry. The German carmaker also said it would make battery-powered vehicles more accessible to mass-market auto buyers by selling its new I.D. compact for about what a Golf diesel costs.
The investment plans for the next five years aim to make Volkswagen “a worldwide supplier of sustainable mobility,” Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said Friday. He added that the company is in talks with Ford Motor Co. about possible cooperation in making light commercial vehicles.
The Detroit News has previously reported on those talks on global partnerships between Volkswagen and Ford, as well as negotiations with Volkswagen to invest potentially more than $1 billion in Argo AI, the robotics and technology company majority-owned by Ford. Volkswagen also is considering a separate investment in Ford’s in-house autonomous vehicle business.
Established automakers as well as several U.S. startups are rolling out electric models to compete with Tesla , currently the market leader. Auto companies need electrics to meet new environmental standards in many countries.
In Europe, manufacturers need to sell more battery-powered cars to meet tougher EU limits on carbon dioxide emissions that come into force 2021 and aim to fight global warming. Automakers like Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW risk penalties of thousands of euros per vehicle if they can’t meet requirements for lower average emissions.
Authorities in China, where Volkswagen gets much of its profit, have also mandated a bigger share of electrics and hybrids.
Yet right now, such vehicles remain a niche market due to higher price and lack of places to charge. Battery-only vehicles were only 0.6 percent of the market in the European Union last year. They are running from 1 to 2 percent of U.S. new-vehicle sales so far this year.
Major new models unveiled in recent weeks from Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen’s Audi brand have been expensive SUVs; Audi’s e-tron starts at a German price of 80,000 euros. The starting price for Tesla’s Model X is around $80,700 while the Model S starts around $74,500.
VW’s upcoming I.D. compact could take mass-market buyers from Tesla’s Model 3, a mass-market car with a base price of $35,000 before tax credits. In reality, though, you can’t order one yet for less than $46,000.
Poetsch said the I.D. compact would be about the cost of a Golf diesel today, which is priced at 23,875 euros in Germany, according to Volkswagen’s website, and goes up as options are added. The next model up the scale starts at 30,625 euros.
General Motors, Nissan and Mitsubishi already are selling mass-market electric vehicles, but they’re still more costly than cars with gasoline engines, and they haven’t sold in great numbers.
Higher cost is one reason consumers are not yet buying purely electric vehicles in large numbers. The lack of charging points is another, leaving many owners of electric vehicles to use them mainly in cities or for shorter trips. Volkswagen and other automakers are working together on building a freeway network of fast-charging stations to enable longer trips with battery powered cars.
Chinese automakers as well as U.S. startup companies also are getting into the electric car market. Rivian, a Detroit-area company, plans to unveil a high-end electric pickup and SUV later this month, to go on sale in late 2020. Lucid Motors, a Newark, California, startup whose leadership includes six former Tesla executives, plans to deliver its first cars in 2020 as well.
The shift to electric cars is a big one for a company the size of Volkswagen, which has over 600,000 employees and makes about 10 million vehicles a year.
It is converting three of its German plants from internal combustion to battery car production as it pivots away from diesel vehicles in the wake of its emissions scandal. It says it will increase the number of electric models from six now to more than 50 by 2025.
Ian Thiboudeau of The Detroit News contributed.
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