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GM To Idle Five Factories In North America, Cut More Than 14,000 Jobs As It Focuses On Autonomous, Electric Vehicles (chicagotribune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Chicago Tribune: General Motors will cut up to 14,000 workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it abandons many of its car models and restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles. The reduction includes about 8,000 white-collar employees, or 15 percent of GM's North American white-collar workforce. Some will take buyouts while others will be laid off. Four factories in the U.S. and one in Canada could be shuttered by the end of 2019 if the automaker and its unions don't come up with an agreement to allocate more work to those facilities, GM said in a statement Monday. Another two will close outside North America. The company has marked a sedan plant in Detroit, a compact car plant in Ohio, and another assembly plant outside Toronto for possible closure. Also at risk are two transmission plants, one outside Detroit and another in Baltimore. GM CEO Mary Barra said the company is "still hiring people with expertise in software and electric and autonomous vehicles, and many of those who will lose their jobs are now working on conventional cars with internal combustion engines," reports Dallas News. "Barra said the industry is changing rapidly and moving toward electric propulsion, autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing, and GM must adjust with it."
The restructuring comes as the U.S. and North American auto markets are shifting away from cars toward SUVs and trucks. "In October, almost 65 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. were trucks or SUVs," reports Chicago Tribune. "It was about 50 percent cars just five years ago."
The restructuring comes as the U.S. and North American auto markets are shifting away from cars toward SUVs and trucks. "In October, almost 65 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. were trucks or SUVs," reports Chicago Tribune. "It was about 50 percent cars just five years ago."
Steel and aluminum tariffs couldn't possibly affect GM profitability, now could they?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Liberals are the educated ones, that's correct. Nice job there GOP, you're up to 7th grade levels or so.
While what you say is generally true, trump is different. Not only did he go to great pains to hold himself out as different, he made different kinds of promises. Which was refreshing in a way. But many of us recognized his promises, while different, were still built on the same kind of bs as the worst politicians.
This is an example of how companies die, often a slow and protracted death ...
GM (and Ford) say: people are not buying sedans, so we will be focusing on autonomous cars that are rented, ...etc.
Meanwhile, Tesla is making a killing selling sedans, and there is a long waiting list for its cars!
GM, Ford and Chrysler have the plants that can produce the majority of what goes into a car: chassis, assembly line, ...etc. An electric motor is not a big deal to make. Batteries are the challenge, but there are Japanese companies willing to sell them.
The conventional car companies are like BlackBerry a decade ago: they saw Apple launch the iPhone in 2007 and ignored it. They said no one wants touch screen, everyone wants a 5 day batter, everyone wants a keyboard, ...etc. Then they watched Google do the exact same thing in 2008, and ignored it. They were complacent, they were arrogant, they were incompetent.
Same thing happens in the auto sector now ...
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Electric car research is how you get investors excited and stock prices up. Perhaps some executives at GM are looking to cash out!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Or as I like to call them, "tall station wagons".
Does anyone know whether SUVs are exempted from the gas mileage requirements? If so, then that means they can "unfairly" be "better" than cars, in the eyes of the consumers.
Because Trump was the only casino that couldn't turn a profit during the Atlantic City boom. He crowed about being the junk bond king just in time for the bottom to fall out of the market. He regularly restructures businesses such that small contractors and workers get stiffed.
The Trump apparel he wore while campaigning is made just about everywhere but America.
The Great Pumpkin would be a better risk.>/p>
That is how GM pursues electric cars.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Cars simply last longer now than they used to.
I bought a BMW i3 (it's the cheapest car based on TCO in Norway right now by my calculation) and part of my purchasing decision was evaluating how it was built. With the exception of computers which are likely to fail because BMW is really bad at electronics, the physical build of the car should last about 30 years.
I expect :
- New tires every three years
- New windshield wipers once a year
- New brakes every three to five years
- Refurbished battery once every 8-10 years (though newer batteries may last longer)
- New motors every 15-20 years
- New computers... not sure how often.
This vehicle is built to last 30 years at substantially lower prices than replacing it. I will replace it when self-driving becomes a real option since I have no interest in driving.
That said, here in Norway, we used to buy a lot of GM cars... now we don't. Now we buy primarily Tesla, BMW i series, Nissan Leafs, Kia electrics. In fact as of October this year, 45% of all new car sales in Norway are electric and we're also buying a bunch of fuel cell cars.
We are ahead of the rest of the world on this because... well... we're western oil country and can afford it. It seems almost humorous that the massive amount of money we spent getting rid of internal combustion engine vehicles was paid for using oil money.
But, you're absolutely right... car sales are on a massive decline.
A few years back, I read an interview with the CEO of Ford at the time who said they need to learn to adapt to a market where instead of their biggest competition being other car companies, it was actually Apple. 18 year old American kids don't have the credit ratings needed to buy their own cars, after school jobs don't pay enough to buy one either. Kids these days would rather have an iPhone and either make their moms drive them or use Uber. They don't want to buy a brand new planet killing Mustang.
I think the market has shifted quite a bit. I've seen more and more one-car households over the years. If kids buy vehicles, they get hoverboards or electric kick bikes. They simply don't need or want the cost or hassle of owning a car. And unlike back in the 80's when I was young, you can't buy a used car and fix it up yourself like we used to. Back then, all you needed to fix a car could fit into a toolbox you kept in the trunk. These days, aftermarket service manuals for cars are borderline useless.
If GM shifts their business towards catering to large volume orders from companies like Uber who hope to run fleets of self driving taxis, it would make a great deal of sense.
Now... if GM would make a yellow, self-driving, electric Camaro with racing stripes... I'll actually consider buying a GM vehicle. But I won't buy the fucking thing if they write the software. I simply don't trust car companies to know how to run programming teams.