Titans
GENERAL MOTORS
Engineering a Greener Future
By Eben Shapiro
For more than a year, from her wood-paneled home office, Mary Barra has been leading General Motors on a quest that, if successful, will be one of the most consequential reinventions in corporate history. GM is playing serious catchup in the electric-vehicle game, and success is far from certain for the legacy carmaker that sold fewer than 21,000 EVs in the U.S. last year. Market leader Tesla accounted for an astonishing 79% of all U.S. EV registrations in 2020, according to Automotive News. (GM’s Bolt was the only non-Tesla model in the top five slots.) GM is also facing stepped-up competition from Volkswagen, which is making its own feverish push into EVs. Barra claims that GM has all the pieces in place to meet its little-noted goal to seize “EV market leadership in North America” by 2025, but even she acknowledges that the company needs to “put a few more points on the board.” To help jump-start EV sales, which currently account for about 2 % of the U.S. market for cars, President Biden’s recently unveiled infrastructure plan includes $174 billion targeted specifically at EVs. Barra, the daughter of a GM autoworker who herself started at GM inspecting fenders, is a rare CEO who has spent her entire career with one company. She recently joined TIME for several conversations on GM’s plan to invest $27 billion in EVs and introduce 30 new models by 2025—and its “aspiration” to quit making cars with tailpipes by 2035.
Let’s get the Tesla–Elon Musk questions out of the way. As a car person and engineer, how do you rate Tesla and the overall driving experience?
I’ve driven a lot of vehicles, and I don’t underestimate any competitor. I think that at General Motors, one of our core principles and foundational elements is safety. And that’s what we focus on. We have a different point of view.
What specifically are you referencing?
Self-driving autopilot vs. General Motors Super Cruise. I think we’ve approached it in a different fashion. So we have a different strategy.
Can you expand on that? In terms of how much control the driver gives up to the car?
There’s really no self-driving vehicles out on the road right now other than in pilots like we have with Cruise. They’re driver-assist systems. [When] we talk about GM’s Super Cruise, we keep it hands-on. We make sure you’re paying attention to the road and you’re engaged in the driving process because you’re still responsible.
