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Originally Posted by Doin It For Dale
What I'm hearing is that GM plans on becoming a technology company, while keeping its four U.S. car brands alive.
GM recently acquired an autonomy company called Cruise Automation, and it's leading their autonomous vehicle development. GM, Honda, and others have invested a total of nearly $6 Billion into Cruise, and GM's President, Dan Ammann, just left his position to become the CEO of Cruise. Dan lead GM's acquisition of the company and was a major influence on GM's work in the Chinese market, which is being forced into EVs and autonomy. Dan also led GM out of bankruptcy as its Chief Financial Officer, so he knows a thing or two about managing finances.
GM's plan is to make Cruise Automation the world leader in autonomy software and hardware, and to sell that software and hardware to other automobile companies. This would bring huge profits for GM without much investment in manufacturing, which is an area that they struggle in. GM may also be working to develop EV batteries to sell to other companies, which would also be highly profitable. GM would keep their car brands and use all of their technology in their own cars, but they wouldn't rely on their car sales for profit. That's GM's plan, as far as I know, and it's a very sustainable one.
GM has to eliminate low-profit assets like the factories they plan to close, and they're going to stop investing in slow-selling products such as sedans, in order to fund new technologies. GM will also use platform sharing and parts sharing to keep spending low, and that means that more electronics and mechanical parts will be shared between gM vehicles. That will boost product reliability and make part replacements much cheaper.
I'm not sure of the full motivations behind eliminating 8,000 executive jobs, besides cutting spending and reducing the time for big decisions to be made. I hope that many of those jobs were in the marketing department, but we'll probably find out later. It will allow cars to come to the market a year to a year and a half faster, which is always good for business. It may also mean that the cars we see will be influenced more be engineers and less by people sitting at conference tables.
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So... GM's plan is basically to not be an American car company anymore. They want to be the software and battery division for the Borg collective.
Platform sharing and parts sharing started in the 1960's when Ford took a passenger car (I believe it was the Falcon), dropped a sporty body on it and called it a Mustang.
So what I read in this statement is they think there's absolutely nothing wrong with their products; the sedans they had designed and built were just super. The problem is the customer. If they truly believe they aren't going to rely on car sales for profits, then that means they've given up. That would explain the lack of advertising. Why spend money on advertising; customers are the problem anyways. They plan on uncoupling themselves from the marketplace; the 'little people', and only working with the global collective.
I don't know who is making the decisions at GM but are there any actual vehicle enthusiasts there? This sounds like they're planning on being assimilated; resistance is futile.
Geez, sometimes it feels like I'm in a sci-fi movie only it's not a movie. Autonomous... marketing/propaganda speak for absolute control; theirs, not yours.
The only good thing to come out of this, is that situations like these have always been the breeding ground for yankee ingenuity. Somebody; one of those pesky 'little people' who aren't one of the self-appointed elites, will invent something in their garage that they didn't know couldn't be done, and presto. A new rising star in the marketplace. Hopefully that will happen sometime soon. The computers and design software is already available for the home user. With the advances in 3d printing improving things at a rapid pace, it might not be too far fetched that someone will come up with a system to print a vehicle on demand. It would be seriously cool to be able to design and print your own body/interior based on an already tested and properly designed chassis you could download the file for. Lots of possibilities there.