Business Insider by Alexa St. John and Nora Naughton 10/26/2023
• At earnings this week, several auto execs pulled back on EV targets.
• Dealers have been warning of slowing EV demand for months.
• "This is a pretty brutal space," Mercedes-Benz's CFO said this week.With signs of growing inventory and slowing sales, auto industry executives admitted this week that their ambitious electric vehicle plans are in jeopardy, at least in the near term.
Several C-Suite leaders at some of the biggest carmakers voiced fresh unease about the electric car market's growth as concerns over the viability of these vehicles put their multi-billion-dollar electrification strategies at risk.
Among those hand-wringing is GM's Mary Barra, historically one of the automotive industry's most bullish CEOs on the future of electric vehicles. GM has been an early-mover in the electric car market, selling the Chevrolet Bolt for seven years and making bold claims about a fully electric future for the company long before its competitors got on board.
But this week on GM's third-quarter earnings call, Barra and GM struck a more sober tone. The company announced with its quarterly results that it's abandoning its targets to build 100,000 EVs in the second half of this year and another 400,000 by the first six months of 2024. GM doesn't know when it will hit those targets.
More:
https://www.businessinsider.com/auto-executives-coming-clean-evs-arent-working-2023-10
