General Motors headquarters in Detroit, Mich., in 2021. That year, the company said it planned to have more than half of its North American and China factories be capable of making EVs by 2030.REBECCA COOK/Reuters
General Motors GM-N will record a negative impact of US$1.6-billion in its next quarter after tax incentives for electric vehicles were slashed by the U.S. and rules governing emissions are relaxed.
Shares fell less than 2 per cent before the opening bell Tuesday.
The EV tax credit ended last month. The clean vehicle tax credit was worth US$7,500 for new EVs and up to US$4,000 for used ones.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency has been working on easing rules aimed at cleaning up auto tailpipe emissions as the Trump administration moves to undo incentives for automakers to go electric. President Donald Trump has also challenged federal EV charging infrastructure money and blocked California’s ban of new gas-powered vehicle sales. It adds up to less pressure on automakers to continue evolving their production away from gas-burning vehicles.
General Motors, which had led the way among U.S. automakers with plans to convert production to an electric fleet of vehicles, said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that it will have to book charges that include non-cash impairment and other charges of US$1.2-billion due to EV capacity adjustments. There’s also US$400-million in charges mostly related to contract cancellation fees and commercial settlements associated with EV-related investments.
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GM warned that it may take additional hits as it adjusts production, with non-cash charges potentially impacting operations and cash flow in the future.
The company said that its EV capacity realignment doesn’t impact its retail portfolio of Chevrolet, GMC and Cadillac EVs currently in production, and that it expects those models to remain available to consumers.
EVs were considered to be the future of the U.S. automotive industry. GM had announced in 2020 that it was going to invest US$27-billion in electric and autonomous vehicles in the next five years, a 35 per cent increase over plans made before the pandemic.
In 2021 GM said that it planned to have more than half of its North American and China factories be capable of making electric vehicles by 2030. It also pledged at the time to increase its investment in EV charging networks by nearly US$750-million through 2025.
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A year later, GM CEO Mary Barra said that the auto maker would sell more electric vehicles in the U.S. than Tesla TSLA-Q by the middle of the decade. GM also had a goal of making the vast majority of the vehicles it produces electric by 2035, and the entire company carbon neutral, including operations, five years after that.
Yet U.S. automakers are being hampered in some of their long-term planning, with drastic changes in economic and environmental policy from one administration to the next. The automakers are also facing increased competition from automakers such as China’s BYD BYDDY, which announced in July that its sales grew 31 per cent in the first six months of the year to 2.1 million cars.
BYD’s sales have skyrocketed on the back of a government-driven EV boom in China. The rise of BYD and other Chinese electric vehicle makers is a challenge for Tesla and the world’s other major automakers as Chinese competitors push into Europe, Southeast Asia and other overseas markets with a relatively affordable option for drivers who want to go green.