Climate

How GM plans to make its ambitious EV goals reality

The automaker's chief sustainability officer is optimistic that GM is well-positioned to rapidly scale up the EV side of its business.

Kristen Siemen, chief sustainability officer of General Motors Co., during the Aspen Ideas Climate conference in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S., on Tuesday, May 10, 2022. The conference is designed for the public to interact, learn, and collaborate with engaged thinkers and doers whose ideas and actions are critical to address the realities of a changing climate. Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"I think everything that’s been put in place to support the transition will be a real positive for the industry and for the country."

Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Automakers are on the cusp of an entirely new era.

The transition to electric vehicles is quickly becoming more than just theoretical: More models are coming onto the scene every day. This week, the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law, enshrining a new structure for EV tax credits and offering a boost to domestic critical mineral mining. The transition isn’t coming a moment too soon, given that the transportation sector makes up the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

In early 2021, General Motors became the first conventional car company to pledge to sell only zero-emission cars and trucks by 2035. And GM chair and CEO Mary Barra said the company’s goal is winning the “long game” when it comes to EV sales. To meet it, though, will require playing a bit of catchup.

In the last few years, a number of GM’s competitors have made ambitious pledges of their own, though the legacy automakers as a group have continued to lag behind EV-only stalwart Tesla in EV sales. Tesla delivered 254,695 new vehicles to customers in the second quarter of 2022, whereas GM’s Chevrolet and GMC brands together delivered just 7,217 plug-in EVs. Meanwhile, Ford’s EV second-quarter sales numbers are more than double GM’s, and the company has at least 200,000 pre-reservations for the electric version of its F-150 truck, the best-selling vehicle in the U.S.

Even so, GM feels its strategy is a winning one, targeting affordability via options like the Chevy Bolt — hovering above $25,000 for the 2023 model, after a dramatic $6,000 price cut — even as its competitors peddle flashier and pricier vehicles. And as the race for materials to build this wave of new EV models heats up, GM is prioritizing the longevity of its battery supply and manufacturing resources both in the U.S. and abroad.

Speaking with Protocol in the wake of the Inflation Reduction Act becoming law, the company’s vice president and chief sustainability officer Kristen Siemen’s outlook was positive: “We’re well on our way,” she said.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Do you anticipate that the IRA might make GM’s transition to EVs more challenging?

While some of the provisions are certainly challenging and won't be achieved overnight, we're confident that the investments that GM has been making in manufacturing and our workforce infrastructure are really going to enable the U.S. to be a global leader in electrification both today and in the future. We're excited about the provisions that will accelerate the adoption of EVs and strengthen American manufacturing and jobs: everything from the customer purchase incentives to tax credits and support for domestic mining and battery production. I think everything that’s been put in place to support the transition will be a real positive for the industry and for the country.

There have been a number of announcements from GM and its competitors in recent months about securing agreements for battery materials. What is GM’s approach, especially given the domestic sourcing requirements instituted by the IRA?

We have binding agreements for all of the battery raw materials that support our goal of a million units in North America by 2025; that includes lithium, nickel and cobalt. And we have agreements to supply the cathode active materials. [The Korean chemical giant] LG Chem has been a great partner with us for a number of years, and to have those battery assembly plants for cell manufacturing here in the U.S. is a true sign of how far we are on this transition to EVs. I've toured a few of those facilities, and things are really humming.

We're very committed to U.S. manufacturing and production. About 50% of our U.S. production will be converted to EVs by 2025, and we've announced four battery plants here in the U.S. We're well on our way to converting our entire portfolio and shifting into an all-EV future, and I think that innovation is going to continue to spur innovation.

How are you guaranteeing that your partners are sourcing their materials responsibly? Are you independently verifying the responsibility of their sourcing practices?

Earlier this year, GM issued an ESG pledge to our suppliers, which includes both human rights protections and fair operating practices, as well as our suppliers’ own carbon neutral goals. As we progress with our carbon neutral goals, we're looking for our suppliers to be there with us as well. [Editor’s note: GM has committed to invest $35 billion in its transition to selling only EVs by 2035, and is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2040.] This pledge asked our suppliers to set their own carbon neutrality commitments, as well as their participation and a minimum score with ESG ratings platform EcoVadis to really demonstrate their attention to everything from ensuring employee health and safety to avoiding corruption or forced labor. If any violations of those commitments came to light, they would be addressed immediately, no question.

We're really comfortable and confident in our supply chain and what we've already been able to secure for the portfolio in the near future, and coupled with our ESG pledge from our suppliers, we’re really confident in what that future looks like.

One other important piece of the puzzle when it comes to the transition to EVs is charging. Is having an open network a part of GM’s strategy?

This is an area where I feel that GM has really made a significant investment. We believe strongly in ubiquitous charging. One main pillar of equitable climate action is infrastructure access and that there aren’t charging deserts in communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change. Our partnership with Pilot and Flying J will accelerate the expansion of charging infrastructure and enable long-distance electric travel via a network of 2,000 chargers.

I’m also really excited about our partnership with our own dealers. They are extremely integrated into their communities. Over 90% of the population in the U.S. is no more than 5 to 10 miles from a GM dealership. So we've committed to install 30,000 charging outlets and to allow the dealers themselves to decide where they should be in their communities. So that may be a local community center or maybe it’s a collection of 10 soccer fields. We want to make sure that charging is available for everybody.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins