After investing billions to adhere to President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda, General Motors (GM) is backtracking on all fronts when it comes to Electric Vehicles (EVs).
As GM was the last of the Big Three to strike a tentative agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW), the automaker’s green energy dreams — championed by the Biden administration — have come crumbling down.
GM CEO Mary Barra, a close ally of Biden’s, has said the automaker will not begin to attempt to produce 400,000 EVs from 2022 through mid-2024 as initially planned. GM is also delaying retooling its plant in Orion Township, Michigan, to build EV pickup trucks.
Days ago, GM had to begin offering owners of its Chevy Bolt about $1,400 to install a diagnostic program to determine if the vehicle’s EV battery is defective. The move came after GM had to recall all of its Chevy Bolts due to the EV battery issues and a class action settlement over the battery problems is anticipated in the near future.
In addition, GM executives are having to delay launching a number of their EV models such as the Chevrolet Equinox EV, the Chevrolet Silverado EV RST, and the GMC Sierra EV Denali.
Those launch delays have coincided with GM and Honda ending their billion-dollar joint venture to produce affordable EVs for Americans as well as markets in South America and China.
The end of that joint venture comes as demand for EVs among Americans has plummeted with the all-electric cars staying on dealership lots for an average of 65 days — way up from last year’s average of about 21 days.
“The American public is not ready for the broad adoption of electric vehicles. There are maybe 10 percent to 12 percent of people who really want an electric vehicle … the remainder still want internal combustion,” former GM executive Bob Lutz said this week.
Aside from potential customers, auto workers at GM have largely been turned off EVs and Biden’s green energy agenda that seeks to foist them on the American public. As part of its deal with GM, the UAW made sure to bring the automaker’s EV plants into its tentative contract so that workers will score higher wages than currently.
GM executives had hoped to keep auto workers at its EV plants out of such contracts. Also significant is the deal’s strike provision which gives GM’s employees the right to strike whenever the automaker closes one of its plants.
While GM stumbles, China is ready to flood the U.S. market with cheap EVs.
Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour has long warned that without major investment in domestic manufacturing and auto workers, steep tariffs, and time for American automakers to adjust, China will dominate the EV industry.
“A Biden-led administration’s rapid push towards an all-electric future would rob U.S. auto workers of the advantage of experience and U.S. auto plants of the advantage of previously built manufacturing capacity,” Mansour wrote in October 2020. “… rushed and without tariffs, most of this will likely end up in China — just like all the rest of American manufacturing thanks to decades of failed trade policies like Joe Biden’s.”
China already has a major advantage over the U.S. in that it controls much of the EV lithium-ion battery supply chain including minerals such as nickel, graphite, lithium, and cobalt.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2023/10/31/gm-backtracks-on-joe-bidens-green-energy-agenda-after-investing-billions/