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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."
Its due to falling sales. If they were successfully focusing on electric they'd still need production capacity. Note part of their 'focus on electric' involves cancelling the Volt, probably their best selling vehicle with electric as the primary power source.
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.
I blame Trump for many things, but awful GM cars is not one of them. People aren't buying GM cars because they just are simply inferior to other brands. If you have money you buy Euro or Japanese. Those with less money are buying Korean.
Whether Trump is to blame or not, this news coupled with Ford's troubles have me wondering if a recession is nigh and how bad it'll be.
If it happens I'm sure Agolf Twitler and his sycophants will try to blame Obama.
And they won't have a clue what to do.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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
GM invested millions of dollars into the EV1 program for their electric car in the 90s. They were positioned to be a global leader in EV technology...until those far sighted C-Suite geniuses at GM killed it.
That is how GM pursues electric cars.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact