General Motors considers the march toward a more sustainable future a vital part of its business going forward, according to GM Global Manager of Renewables Rob Threlkeld, who says that the utility and transportation sectors are seeing the pace of innovation accelerate dramatically. To him, the advent of self-driving, autonomous cars is nearly as important to GM’s green strategy as electrification.
“Five years ago, there was not a lot of talk around autonomous vehicles,” he told Business Chief Magazine recently. “Electrification was starting to just start to come around. We only had the [Chevrolet] Volt at that time. We’ve now got the Volt and the Bolt. But you can see this massive switch to where autonomous vehicles are definitely part of a future with zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion components. You’ve seen this technology revolution in both the utility and transportation sectors.
“You’re going to see more change in those sectors in the next five years than we’ve seen in the last 50-100 years.”
At the same time, General Motors has taken pains to revamp its manufacturing infrastructure to lower their environmental impact, as well. “From a competitive standpoint,” the sustainability of GM’s products and its manufacturing methods are “really linked together in a way they weren’t before, even a few years ago,” Threlkeld says.
But a gap exists between the amount of green energy that big corporations like GM are today calling for, and what can be provided by utility companies, according to a Wind Energy Foundation report. Emissions are emissions, whether they’re coming straight from the tailpipe, from the power plants that allow consumers to charge their electrified vehicle models, or from the energy demands of GM’s manufacturing plants.
Threlkeld says he thinks that’s “just part of the evolution of the process.” Five years ago, he says, the conversation was around “what the companies really need to do in [the sustainability] space to engage with each other.” Then, it became about “how do we gauge the utilities, which are really the natural potential owners of the renewable energy assets? That’s where we started to take off as we looked at green tariffs in the US and what utilities were starting to offer.”
Threlkeld says the last part of the progression is “the issue of moving this low-cost electricity. From a company standpoint, we’re always looking for the most economic source of generation that we can procure and sometimes getting it to our facilities can be a challenge. How do we now engage relevant stakeholders – the regional transmission operators or the independent system operators in this process – as technology drives the future both in utilities and transport?
“It has to be in a way that ultimately benefits all the customers.”
Comments
Hopefully the increasing pace of green innovation translates to cheaper and less expensive batteries for an electrified fleet given current circumstances has General Motors losing $9,000 on the sale of each Chevrolet Bolt it builds which translates to bleeding over $13.5M per month in loses meaning if the Chevrolet Bolt was as successful as Toyota’s Camry selling 90,000 cars per month it could cause General Motors to go bankrupt within a year because of loses nearing $10 Billion which could happen when GM moves to a completely electric vehicle fleet.. given the horrific numbers, GM’s Board of Directors need to reign in GM CEO Mary Barra and slow the pace of electrification until technology catches up and allow for a profit for each EV sold.
With that simplistic logic, Tesla must be losing even more per sale, yet sell plenty of Model S every month, and its fans gave it a $1,000 loan per reservation interest free.
Well no kidding. We have gone from next to nothing to billion dollar budgets.
That spending results in improved and cheaper products. It takes money to make money.
The real issue yet is that there is no major effort to invest in charging systems. The reason there is the lack of one share system.
The MFGs need to get with the SAE and standardize a system just as the did with nuts and bolts or gas tank openings.
But the problem is everyone wants their system. Also new discoveries could render chargers out dated over night if it will not charge a newly discovered battery.
Progress will be made but EV products still have many issues to work out.
As long as you have to plan your lifestyle around them many will resist.
As for price I was shown an offer for the Bolt for $24k with the tax break. they are getting there. That makes it a consideration for daily drive it to work status price wise now. That is as long as the tax break is in.
As for going broke. No they will not. The trucks more than pay the bills and Mary has put GM in good place with them cutting their cost so they can invest not just in EV but fiber compsits and better ICE engines.
GM is in place to be at the forefront in many areas that will require EV models only like in Europe and California.
Heck the Denali line alone May eclipse the Camry profits alone with their volume and high ATP.
I don’t believe for one minute that GM is not making any money on the Bolt or Volt they are not making as much profit on the two cars as they do on other models. Their is no way their not making some profit. The $9,000 you think their going in the whole is a figure that some fiy by night company comes up with, GM has never said that. GM is making a profit. Lets tell it like it is.By the way I have one of each of the cars Bolt & Volt. They are EXCELLENT vehicles Love both vehicles