EVs Are a Failed Experiment
General Motors admits it has lost — so far — about $3.3 billion on EVs. It is apparently not enough to persuade GM that EVs are losers.
“We continue to believe in EVs,” GM’s CEO Mary Barra said the other day. Adding that “our portfolio brought almost 100,000 new customers to GM in 2025.” That these customers didn’t add a cent to GM’s bottom line doesn’t seem to matter to Barra. “We know these drivers do not often go back to gas, so we will continue executing our plan to reduce EV-related costs and we remain confident in our path to EV profitability.” (RELATED: EVs and Autonomous Vehicles: General Motors’ Doomed Focus on Unprofitable Boutique Products)
Oh really?
Then why are so many manufacturers — including GM — dialing back on their EV offerings or cancelling them altogether? GM announced — just before Barra’s announcement — that it would end production of its Bolt EV shortly after bringing forth the latest iteration of it, a brand-new 2027 iteration that will be offered in “limited numbers” for the 2027 model year. Then it will be kiboshed in favor of a Buick that isn’t battery-powered.
Dodge had to rush into the breach with a Charger with an engine to prevent the cancellation of Dodge, which is still quite possible. An entire lineup of Chrysler EVs has been cancelled. The “electrified” Ram 1500 is dead on the table, too. (RELATED: Celebrating the End of EVs)
Perhaps the most spectacular example of this drawdown is Ford’s cutting bait on the “electrified” F-150 Lightning, which it now admits has cost the company something on the order of $20,000 each per “sale.” (RELATED: What’s an ‘EREV’?)
Never mind all that!
GM intends to “invest” more in EVs. Among these “investments” are plans for (here it comes, again) “new battery technologies,” including “lower cost” lithium manganese-rich (LMR) chemistries. The problem with such “investments” is that they take no cognizance of the other problem, which has nothing to do with the cost of EV battery packs but rather the time it takes to recharge them. You have probably heard about EV battery packs in development that can be charged in “only” 10 minutes or so — as if doubling the time it takes vs. the time it takes to fully fuel a gas-engine vehicle constitutes some kind of improvement. (RELATED: VW’s EV: Only 10 Percent Loss!)
Perhaps it does, in the way that gas costs “only” abut $3 per gallon now — vs. $4 a year ago — constitutes an improvement. Never mind that gas used to cost $1.50 per gallon.
The problem, though, isn’t cost.
Let’s say GM figures out a way to make an “affordable” battery that can be fully charged (not just partially charged) in five minutes or less. It will be something like a Saturn V rocket without propellant, in that absent a way to impart the charge quickly, it will not matter how quickly it could be charged — hypothetically. Even if it costs about the same as an otherwise equivalent gas-engine car, there will still be that time cost, and the fact is, most people aren’t interested in paying it.
To get a battery fully charged in five minutes in actuality would require an almost magical supply of electricity, magically delivered. We are talking ‘bout enough electricity to power a shopping mall — or a small town — to feed a small handful of EV kiosks capable of imparting that kind of power into an EV’s battery in ten minutes or less, let alone five minutes or less. That kind of power would require infrastructure that does not exist, as well as generating capacity that does not exist.
Will “investments” be made in that, too?
No doubt there are some who would love to make them — with other people’s money, of course. That is just what was done by — or under the auspices of — the wispy-haired ancient malingerer who tottered in front of the presidential podium from 2020-2024. His successor tried to pull the plug on that, but a court just ruled the spice must flow.
Even so, it will take a lot more “spice” for this to ever be feasible on a mass scale. No one — at GM at least — seems to ask why the quest (and cost-no-object) to try to make it so? But there is an answer that may explain the otherwise inexplicable.
It is that GM sees its future in places such as Chyna, where the “investments” are being made — and plenty of spice is flowing. America is a tapped-out place, and so are Americans. There are only 320 million or so of the latter, and only about 15 million of them buy new vehicles, electric or not. But there are about 1.5 billion Chinese. There are also lots of Europeans. More finely, Europe is faster at emulating China than the U.S. is. EVs are all but required in many European countries, and that is why Mercedes and VW/Audi, other European brands, “invested” even more than GM (and Ford) have in EVs.
They desperately need those “investments” to pan out.
GM — and Ford — no doubt hope to recoup the costs of their “investments” so far — and are now in a holding mode, waiting for Trump to destroy MAGA and thus usher in a regime more friendly to such “investments.”
This is probably the undertow of Barra’s comments and also those of GM’s CFO, Paul Jacobson. “We have not impaired our existing retail portfolio of EVs,” he said the other day. “We are working to improve the profitability of these vehicles through new battery technologies, engineering improvements and operational efficiencies.”
So the “electrified” vampire isn’t dead yet. And it will take more than a stake through his heart to assure he’s dead for good.
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