GM CFO Says Quality Issues With Its EVs Need To Be Addressed Ahead Of Market Launch

GM has pushed back the launch of some of its anticipated electric cars

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General Motors chief financial officer Paul Jacobson has acknowledged the automotive giant needs to resolve issues with its electric vehicles, having delayed a number of its impending vehicles over the past year.

One of GM’s most significant product delays was the launch of the Chevrolet Equinox EV that was pushed back. Furthermore, its starting price was set at $34,995, higher than the ~$30,000 figure that Chevy had initially promised. Jacobson added that the brand also needs to nail prices on its EV to win over new customers.

“We’ve had a couple of unfortunate delays in the programs and we’re making sure that we work out the final bugs because the most important thing, especially when you’re coming with a new platform like these EVs, you’ve got to deliver it with quality to the customers,” Jacobson said at the Citi 2024 Global Industrial Tech and Mobility Conference in Florida. You can make the mistake of going too fast to hit volume targets before they’re ready and we don’t want to do that. So we’re focused on executing some of the final touches of getting those vehicles to market.”

Read:Mary Barra Promises GM’s EV Production Will Be “Significantly Higher” Next Year

While GM is eager to ensure its EVs are perfect before they hit the market, some of its new models are still encountering issues. Late last year, a stop-sale was ordered for the Blazer EV due to a litany of software-related issues that were uncovered when journalists were testing it. Then, earlier this week, GM issued a stop-sale for two of its non-EV models, the 2024 GMC Canyon and Chevrolet Colorado, also due to a software problem.

Jacobson believes the Ultium platform will become profitable once it sells over 200,000 EVs annually in North America.

“There’s a really important stair step this year of getting to variable profit positive and a lot of that is growing into our skin on what we’ve built,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “We have to be careful to not blindly play the volume game. We don’t need to grow significantly in the market to get to 200,000 to 300,000 vehicles this year, we think we can do it with stable pricing.”