(Reuters) – General Motors is still struggling to ramp up production of electric vehicles, a top executive said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a J.P. Morgan investor conference, GM Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said the automaker’s electric vehicles, from Cadillac Lyriq SUVs to BrightDrop vans, had been affected by an issue with assembling battery modules – a stumbling block first noted last week by Chief Executive Mary Barra.
Jacobson said GM had built more than 1,000 Lyriqs in July — still well below the company’s initial expectations.
GM in early 2022 said it expected to build 25,000 Lyriqs at the company’s Spring Hill, Tennessee, plant last year, but fell far short of that target. In the first six months this year, GM delivered fewer than 2,400 Lyriqs to customers, as it struggled with batteries and other issues.
Jacobson pointed to its majority-owned Cruise automated vehicle operation as a bright spot, as the unit enters a “big phase of operational expansion,” with more than 400 vehicles on the road.
Cruise has “largely solved all the technology challenges,” Jacobson said, and is still targeting $1 billion in revenue in 2025 and growing margins as costs continue to come down.
(Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit, editing by Deepa Babington)
