It’s no surprise big cities have lower car ownership. Therefore, General Motors is not surprised its market share is the weakest in major cities.
As a way to strategize growth, GM will focus on autonomous vehicles and ride/car sharing services for large metropolitan areas, according to The Detroit News.
“If you look at our market share, where we are the weakest, it’s in the big city areas,” North America CFO John Stapleton said during a presentation Wednesday at Citi’s 2016 Industrials Conference in Boston. “In one aspect, I could view this as an opportunity for General Motors to grow our market share in the cities with autonomous vehicles.”
Naturally, congested areas are prime for ride sharing and autonomous vehicles. GM has taken major steps to ensure it grabs a share of this future market with a $500 million investment into Lyft, the acquisition of Cruise Automation and the launching of Maven, GM’s personal mobility brand.
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“It’s no surprise big cities have lower car ownership. Therefore, General Motors is not surprised its market share is the weakest in major cities.”
Therefore? Nah. For this to be true all major car companies must be ‘weakest in major cities’. If they are not, the size of the city has nothing to do with it.
Cities are known for highly successful educated types. The educated ones go to sources like Consumer Reports and get the general impression Asian cars are better. The highly successful ones want to be seen in fancy brands — which are not most GM products.
I suspect that is why they’re not doing so well in cities.