Activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 announced that it has a stake in General Motors, citing the automaker’s push for widespread all-electric vehicle adoption.
Per a recent post from Reuters, Engine No. 1 took its stake in General Motors back in August, but declined to issue a public statement on its intentions regarding the automaker until now. The hedge fund reportedly took a stake of nearly 400,000 shares.
“The company’s early lead on battery technology, along with Mary Barra and the board’s leadership, creates tremendous advantages,” said Engine No. 1 founder Chris James. “There’s a narrative that only tech companies can move quickly to embrace change and win as the world changes. We don’t think that’s true. GM has that leadership.”
Engine No. 1 also indicated that it had “very constructive and collaborative two-way conversations” with General Motors, and that the automaker was set to “recapture market share” with its latest battery technology.
General Motors stock value was up 3.2 percent following Engine No. 1’s announcement.
Engine No. 1 made headlines earlier this year after it challenged ExxonMobile, criticizing the oil and gas giant for its environmental record and carbon footprint reduction efforts. Engine No. 1 has also pressured Apple to make efforts to reduce children’s smartphone usage.
Engine No. 1 released a white paper Monday that outlines the need for the auto industry to transition to all-electric power and how automakers can facilitate that change, in particular General Motors.
“We value the perspectives of all stakeholders as we continue driving the future of mobility,” said GM spokesman Jim Cain said in an email, per the Reuters report.
General Motors has invested heavily into EVs as of late, stating that it will launch 30 new all-electric vehicles by 2025. GM has also stated that it has earmarked $35 billion in investments for new electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle technologies through 2025, and that it will achieve carbon neutrality for North American operations by 2025.
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Comments
So the big announcements I predicted this week are off to a good start, hang on folks, this is just Monday.
And all the reviews of the Hummer EV make it look very promising.
Hardly a major announcement. Engine 1 is basically a far-left activist organization that seeks to impose its will on companies.
What in the **** does this have to do with a company having faith in another organization??? Stop bringing up politics. If it was Exonmobil stating the same thing, you wouldn’t be so quick to spill your political nonsense. Go back under your rock, and don’t come out until you’re ready to keep irrelevant comments to yourself.
Why don’t you research their background like I did. But I know it is a bit beyond your intellect and a challenge to someone like you.
Dude’s comment was that you needlessly injected politics into the conversation. Then ya doubled down on your irrelevance by needlessly attempting to demean dude’s intellect. Ironically, yer syntax throughout demonstrates whom the truly challenged individual is….
Engine 1 exists to combat climate change. Wow. Alert the media. Oh, wait, they did. There, that’s taken care of….
Get off my nuts I don’t need your help.
Haha my guy 😎
SonicFan Rather you like it or not, the political left has politicized every facet of everyone’s life. That is how fascist operate. Now it has reached the auto industry full fledged. I hate it.
So they took a .0003 percent stake in gm. Big deal…
At the just now GM stock price of $53.75 a share.
400,000 shares amounts to $21.5 million
Cheap price and a very small virtue signaling stake. Barra had best not allow any activist investors push GM EV into moving at too fast a pace with poor economic headwinds on the horizon.
US still lacks a dedicated charging network. Tesla isn’t making money even though they dominate this segment.
EVs wil not help GM take back significant market share for years.
This is only done because Mary doesnt wow the capital market. She is on the Lib agenda and was aligned with hillary in 2016. A few years ago she laid off 25,000 GM engineers and it was a blip in stock price for a minute and it went back down. She struggles with virtue signalling to hoodwink investors. the GREEN REALITY: Lithium strip mining pollutes far worse than coal and increasing demand more than the present level requires expansion in conflict areas (afghanistan 2.0) in Africa where China has already staked claims. The UK, Germany and China profit from the US going EV – but we wont.
Unless, of course, we start investing, too….
The “dude” was the ones who started with the personal attacks. If he/she cannot take it, don’t dish it out.
It is also naive to think that politics is not intertwined in everything that gm does and the decisions their “leadership” makes. Gotta-have product is takin a back seat to “inclusion,” “wokeism” and saving the planet. Got news for you: a lot more vehicles are sold on features and value than they are the social causes a company panders to.
i don’t think the numbers are important.
engine 1 is basically telling all of the big money managers/investors who are under pressure to only invest in green companies, that gm has their seal of approval.
so perhaps gm will garner more attention from wall street as a result. i think that is why their stock jumped a little on the news.
Steve, if this one sticks it will be the first. GMs issue was the generous pensioner program they couldnt shirk in the bankruptcy. Every worker has to support 8+ retired workers in overheads and its a huge burden.
This EV gamble will result in bankruptcy 2.0 for GM. Hopefully this time we will have a president who won’t bail the out with tax payer money.
I agree, we should go back to steam powered transportation.
How about a little bit of everything, not just EV’s.
EV BAD
Not as bad your childish comment.
@USA 1: If GM goes, so does Ford and Stellantis’s North American operations as it will tank the supplier networks and they will all collapse soon after.
If you were worried about the Chinese automakers now, just wait when the US auto manufacturing industry craters.
Let me ask you a question. If companies continue to make bad decisions and just say they do need to be bailed out again when does it stop? When do they stop getting bailed out?
No to bailing out any old company that makes bad decisions, but when that company becomes “too big to fail” and hundreds of thousands of people who work for them, their suppliers, and their competitors who rely on them being around have their companies /jobs legitimately threatened, the first company needs to be bailed out to prevent catastrophe. Paying back the bailout money once things are stable.
I’d rather we not bail out any large companies but unfortunately, we live in a world where companies (Including banks) are allowed to get as big as they want by gobbling up the competition and then act carelessly with the livelihoods of thousands of people who work for or rely on them.
Having said all of that, the premise that GM is heading towards certain bankruptcy because they’re transitioning to electric is completely devoid of logic considering the majority of the industry is doing just that. I would legitimately be worried for an automaker’s future if it wasn’t going to offer at least a 50% all-electric lineup in the next 10 years.
I understand what you are saying and I agree it just sucks. Hopefully nobody will need another bailout.
When they are no longer of strategic importance.
Then GM and Ford need to start making better decisions. They need to improve on quality first and foremost. GM needs to make one or two EV models that don’t burn down homes because of battery fires first. When it comes to EV’s you have to crawl before you walk. But as usual GM will use the consumer as R&D like they did with the Vega and other models. Don’t give a deadline on when they will convert over to all electric, cause when they don’t make that deadline they will look incompetent.
You’re all over the place with that last comment. Look, It’s very obvious that you don’t like EVs but it’s the future of the industry and everyone knows it. I’m sorry that this is a bitter pill for you to swallow.
As GM builds more EVs, it will continue moving battery production in-house (improving quality control) and continue to make gains in range and charging times much like Tesla had and continues to do now. It’s just how it works.
I also find it really disingenuous that you would prefer the US auto industry to tank to prove some sort of point that bailouts are bad.
The whole reason why the last bailout happened under the Bush admin was because the looming recession would have been dramatically worsened by the potential massive job losses.
Nice insult Andy thanks for trying to embarrass me I hope you feel better now.
The key to these investors is not so much the cars but the technology GM is working in.
They hope to sell and license much of their tech but wil,the other mfgs buy?
GM invested much in Lotus Engineering only to find other mfgs reluctant to contract jobs to them. Others trusted Porsche Engineering but not GM owned Lotus.
GM wants to be more like Intel and supply the tech that e erroneous uses as that is where the money really is in computers.
These investors are the ones that hold on even in down turns. Like Tesla investors who hang on as Tesla did some foolish things or should I say Musk.
Sorry, getting involved with activist is desperate and foolish.
Will they want their money back when 99.9% of GM vehicle sales worldwide come back as gas cars, and 70% of those are trucks and SUV’s?
Do you really think that’s going to happen?
It’s already happening. Buick NA is a all crossover, GMC doesn’t have a single car, Chevy emerging markets is moving to more and more crossovers and small trucks. Is EV sales are abysmal at best and majority Tesla, and not because they are eletric vehicles, it’s cause they are new and cool. China is promising EV’s yet at this moment they have an energy crisis with not enough coal for this year or much of the next. Many factories in China right now are working by candlelight while at the same time China is being threatened by the UN for climate emissions. They’ll have 100,000 EV’s in bejing for a front, but the rest will all be gas as. Their economy can’t afford it now nor in the forseable future. The math isn’t there.
1st world runs on fossil fuel. 3rd world uses flaky solar or 800% cost wind. windmill makers all lied to us with a 30 year life. They get 8 years and then enter a low output ultra-high maintenance cost phase until they are abandoned. The Green proponents dont show pictures of the 10 year old, remote windmill farms. Good luck swapping out all of those 90 foot long blades all going bad simultaneously. Now a field of expensive monuments. and then they buy the expensive power on the market, like texas did this past winter and people had $1200 bills. That is the real cost with Solar. And, welcome to the 3rd world. We havent learned the lesson of wind/solar, now we stand to repeat it, while those vendors buying the $35000/plate dinners at the democ. fundraisers will be lining their pockets.
the real cost with WInd. Solar is less reliable and another 3rd world mode.
Wow, some of you folks’ brainpower are beyond help.
The problem isnt only about having electric cars that wont flash up in fire – we DONT HAVE AN ELECTRIC GRID TO SUPPORT ELECTRIC. if everyone gets home from work and plugs in then the entire electric grid goes DOWN because it is a 600% power glut from the regular load. And there isnt a way around it. Wind makes a $200 electric bill into $1200/mo. Home Solar isnt on at night, short winter days, or on a car thats at work during daylight. Batteries at home double your production cost in a home solar plan and would have 400a drawing against it at 8pm – thats not gonna work. All the way around, electric is a loser. cars cost twice, grid wont handle it, and we havent got into 5-6 times a year of coastal FEMA evacuations of 10million people with widespread power outages and destruction of home based power plants, post hurricane. How soon will 1 million homes get new solar panels? How do those 1 million people get to work/school/doc/etc. People – Green will convert our first world USA into a third world nightmare.
Just a thought…… or at least in my opinion, EV’s may be successful in the mass-market for awhile. Replacement batteries are required at roughly five years at more cost than the value of the car. And, is someone actually going to build a battery powered airplane with the power and the size of a Boeing 777? Air is the second largest provider of transportation. I honestly don’t think that’s going to happen in my lifetime. Green dreams are just that — dreams. So, I don’t care! Totally agree with Dan Simeon!!!
By the way, there is no “e” in ExxonMobil.
Can you imagine the poor resale value of these Evs at trade in time if the batteries are nearing the end of their useful lives?
GM grabbed the important (Regen Brake, recently expired) patents during the first round EV1 failure of the 35 mile range EV, killed the program, crushed all the cars. They will need to do it again to electric. Thanks EN1 for your token “investment” that is hardly a blip on the trading day.
BTW – Tesla became a hit in Cali as an exclusive $80K elitist car mfg that put Tesla charging stations next to pot dispensaries – smart person who owns those dispensaries. This really helps when the car can drive itself.
The real kiss of death for Telsa is when they no longer have a market for their CO2 allotment that other car makers buy up.
Why in the world would you get involved with activist? This looks so desperate and foolish.
I guess no one will be saying, “hey pop your hood, let’s see what ya got” anymore!
Perhaps the fire Department will
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