Mary Barra Reiterates GM’s Self Driving Tech & EV Competence

GM’s CEO Marry Barra has often expressed a desire to beat Tesla as the biggest electric car brand in the US by 2025. Now, in another interview with the Claman Countdown, Barra spoke about the impressive demand for GM’s new electric cars. At the same time, she also admitted to issues on the supply chain side like the global semiconductor shortage. 

“Frankly, since the beginning of COVID, the supply has been stretched pretty thin, so I’m very proud of what we’re able to do. We’re seeing an improvement with semiconductors and that’s allowing us to make more and more vehicles,” she said. 

Barra added that it will have two US based battery manufacturing facilities would be opening in a matter of few weeks. This will help GM get better battery supply and make its customers eligible for the federal tax credits. She reiterated her confidence on GM’s ability to overtake Tesla in their home market but for the first time she did not drive home the 2025 timeline. 

GM has already announced rather affordable electric cars like the Equinox EV, Blazer EV and the Silverado EV. GM though has some serious catching up to do considering Tesla delivered 255,000 cars in just Q2 of 2022 while GM just delivered 7,200 EVs in the same period. While this happens, Ford is also ramping up and is rather ahead of GM and there are other big groups eying the US market like Volkswagen, Mercedes and Stellantis. 

Barra was also confident about Cruise, its self-driving unit. GM was one of the pioneers of the technology and has poured billions into the autonomous car company. In this space Barra has never really said that it wants to beat Tesla, but then again for many car companies, Tesla’s claims of full self-driving tech are hyperbolic and the benchmark is Google’s Waymo. 

In that regard, Cruise is actually slightly ahead of Waymo and has been operating a fully driverless taxi service in San Francisco since 2021. It has logged several kilometres and there have been hundreds of trips. 

“I’m really impressed and pleased with the progress Cruise has made under Kyle Vogt’s (CEO) leadership from the technology being ready. You know, I think a couple years ago, everybody thought they’ll be autonomous vehicles everywhere, know they think it’s years away. It’s not. It’s here right now,” Barra explained. 

Barra also added that she believed self-driving cars were the future of the automobile industry due to the safety advantages and the lack of human error. She said 90 percent of the accidents were caused because of human error.