GM’s Mary Barra Remains Undeterred About an Electric Future

Emily Chang, Bloomberg News

Mary Barra, center, and Michael Simcoe, GM’s head of design, right, at GM’s new design center with Emily Chang. Photographer: Emily Elconin/Bloomberg ,

(Bloomberg) -- Electric vehicles were having a moment. Now that momentum is sputtering.

Tesla Inc. sales are slowing. Carmakers around the world are warning of a bumpy road to electrification. Anyone who already owns an EV probably has had to wait in line at a public charging station, or sweated the anxiety about someday finding themselves with an empty battery.

None of this has deterred General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra, however. She’s charging forward with plans to turn out at least one EV model for every GM brand, and convince America’s middle class that electric is the future. “I think it was overhyped and now it’s probably underhyped, and the truth is somewhere in the middle,” Barra says on the latest episode of The Circuit with Emily Chang. “Growth has slowed, but it’s still growing.”

Barra, a Michigan native, faced a brutal public reckoning in 2014 when the company became aware of a flawed ignition switch in some models. The switch was eventually linked to hundreds of deaths and cost billions of dollars in subsequent lawsuits. She was skewered on Saturday Night Live, where she was played by Kate McKinnon, testifying before Congress and unable to answer lawmakers’ questions about the automaker’s recall.

Barra moved to transition GM to a “safety-first” culture, with company meetings beginning with a safety message. Now she’s trying to reinvent the company again—as a tech-forward EV leader.

Her enthusiasm isn’t exactly matched by the American public. Consumers are sticking with gas guzzlers or looking at hybrid cars again due to the high sticker prices and financing costs associated with EVs (in addition to so-called range anxiety). As a result, GM plans to reintroduce gas-electric hybrid models in North America, even as it pushes forward with its all-EV vision, which Barra insists will happen by 2035.

Barra, 62, who drives an electric GM Hummer and is known to sing along to Taylor Swift from behind the wheel, acknowledges there have been bumps on the road, including various delays to timelines and production targets. “I grew up in manufacturing,” says Barra. “So I feel like we do have a lot of manufacturing expertise, but I think we took for granted some of the newer processes, and we will not do that again.”

GM was one of the first to market with an electric model, the EV1, in 1996. But the carmaker killed it and watched Tesla speed ahead and grab the biggest share of the EV market. Tesla also looms large in the public’s perception of an electric car. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has openly mocked traditional automakers for their slowness.

“If I had a do over, I would have—even though we were moving , I would have accelerated the pace,” Barra says about her initial rollout of electric cars.

Barra’s plan now is to take a page from Silicon Valley’s playbook. GM has been poaching auto engineers from companies like Apple Inc., and recently built a futuristic design center near Detroit, where engineers are crafting the next generation of cars.

Michael Simcoe, GM’s head of design, says the public still thinks of the 116-year-old company as “slow, almost a dinosaur.” But things are changing, he says. “You walk in here and you see the work we’re doing. You see the products on the road now. And I don’t think that you can justify that description anymore.”This episode of The Circuit With Emily Chang premieres Wednesday May 1, at 6 pm ET on Bloomberg Television and streaming on the Bloomberg app and Bloomberg.com. Check out The Circuit podcast for extended conversations.

--With assistance from Lauren Ellis, David Welch and Alan Jeffries.