GM believes shift to EVs will be faster in China.
General Motors is shaking up its vehicle lineup in China. This time, they want to highlight their ambitions of boosting its presence in the electric vehicle industry in the region. This came after a drop in sales disrupted their decades of growth in China, where it depends on almost one-fifth of their profits, per a Reuters exclusive.
Going Electric
This Wednesday, GM will be holding an event called “Tech Day” in Shanghai which will be a platform to unveil new products and technology from the company. Per CNBC, this could be akin to their March’s “EV Day” in which they relayed several information regarding their EV business.
GM accelerates its push into the fast-growing electric-car segment in China, seeking to challenge sales leader Tesla and local contenders https://t.co/HHE0ojOB1n
— Bloomberg (@business) August 19, 2020
The carmaker also confirmed they intend to pour billions of dollars of investment for autonomous and electric vehicles. They want to have launched 20 new EVs by 2023.
Engineering EVs
This was echoed by GM’s Chinese arm, with their new head Julian Blissett citing EVs and near hands-free vehicles are key to strengthen the brand in the region. He said: “This market is rapidly electrifying. Cadillac is on a path to very heavy electrification. Buick is also going to heavily electrify.”
He added an emphasis on what the brand is going for in the future. “In the next five years, more than 50 percent of our capital and engineering deployment will go towards electrification and autonomous-drive technology.”
GM and Tech on China
When GDP in China had decelerated, so did the sales in the auto industry. This in turn affected the sales of GM, which is facing huge competition in the region, according to analysts.
Blissett said that the Chinese are huge on tech. He is betting that cars going electric will be witnessed at a faster rate in China.
Blissett also revealed the company’s strategy to increase sales in China, which in 2019 had a market share of 12.2 percent. “Our business is a high engineering cost, high capital cost business, so,without scale, it’s quite difficult to make money. We do need to return to that.”