General Motors: History, innovation, and legacy
Learn about the rich history and notable innovations of General Motors, from its founding in 1908 to its leadership in electric and autonomous vehicle technology.
- Barra highlighted challenges to EV production planning amid regulatory and industry hurdles.
- Barra touched on GM’s partnership with Hyundai after meeting with executive chairman that day.
When General Motors announced a historic move from the Renaissance Center on the Detroit riverfront to a space on Woodward Avenue, CEO Mary Barra announced the new venue would be “one that’s very personal to me.”
Growing up in Waterford, Barra has fond memories of the dazzling Christmas lights on Woodward as her family visited the J.L. Hudson Department Store, the site of what for a time was the world’s tallest department store, every year.
“My mother would take my brother and I here and we would shop at the children’s-only shop. It was this really cool area smaller than this room, where you would go in — for me, it would be my $7, and I would be buying Christmas presents without my parents.”
Hudson’s closed its downtown location in 1983, and the building was imploded in 1998, leaving a vacant surface lot.
Speaking Sept. 11, Barra said onstage at Automotive News Congress — the publication’s annual industry event held at The Department at Hudson’s, the event space below the new GM’s global headquarters being readied inside the new Hudson’s Detroit building — that the moment was something of a full circle.
GM has agreed to an initial 15-year, multilevel lease for the top office floors of the building on Woodward, part of billionaire Dan Gilbert’s Hudson’s development.
“We knew we wanted to stay in Detroit, it’s our home, but we also knew our business was changing, and how we do business,” Barra said. “We’re excited to be working with (Gilbert) and we can’t wait to move in in January.”
Barra fielded questions on GM’s business outlook as well as Barra’s reflections on her time leading the largest Detroit automaker at the Automotive News event Sept. 11. Here are some of the topics she addressed:
Barra on GM’s resilience with EVs
In the 10 years since GM developed its strategy to develop a full portfolio of electric vehicles across product types, seismic issues repeatedly roiled the industry and put strain on the company’s capital.
After serious restructuring following the automaker’s bankruptcy, “unprecedented events” bedeviled the industry as GM worked to chart a new course for its propulsion systems in the United States that better aligned with global trends, she said.
“We’ve been through so much as a country, as a world, as an industry — you think about COVID, you think about the semiconductor shortage, the impact that had on suppliers — and we’re still working through that while we’re dealing with tariffs and … a fairly big shift from a regulatory perspective,” Barra said. “Up until a year ago, we were on a journey to a regulatory environment where we had to drive EVs.”
Customer interest has grown in electric vehicles, she said, but not at a fast enough clip to justify the original manufacturing plans. GM has repeatedly altered production to meet consumer needs; balancing inventory of the vehicles people are purchasing now with the electrified offerings the company invested significant capital and planning to premiere.
Part of the challenge, Barra said, was knowing how long the company could hold off before making decisions on which vehicles to produce as gas-propulsion or battery electric.
“There were a couple of decision points over the last couple years where, if we started a new program, ‘OK, when did we need to really make a decision on what we do? And what were the milestones along the way?’ As we gained the information, we said, ‘Yes, we’re going to do that program from an internal combustion,’ ” she said. “You have to do things based on a number of scenarios.”
GM’s Spring Hill Manufacturing plant, located in Spring Hill, Tennessee, provides the blueprint of the automaker’s flexible strategy, she said, as the plant had been converted to produce both gasoline-powered vehicles and battery electric at the same site.
On GM’s Hyundai partnership
Barra met with Euisun Chung, executive chair at Hyundai Motor Group, earlier on Sept. 11, she said. Chung was also honored at the Automotive News event.
GM and Hyundai signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding in September 2024 in order to co-produce vehicles as well as “review opportunities for combined sourcing in areas such as battery raw materials, steel and other areas,” Barra said.
The companies said Aug. 6 that they would jointly develop five vehicles, four of which — a compact SUV, a car, a pickup and a midsize pickup — are targeted at Central and South American markets and will support both internal combustion and hybrid powertrains, and one electric van for North America.
Barra would not divulge details on their discussion, but said the relationship had moved beyond the memorandum of understanding phase and that the companies are “actually doing work together.”
“We did have a meeting that I would say was very productive. I think the auto industry could do a much better job on sharing (research and development) dollars as well as capital, especially in areas that are non-customer facing, that don’t differentiate us,” Barra said. “As we started having conversations with Hyundai, we found a partner that shared that view. We approached things looking for win/win.”
About vehicle design
Regardless of the propulsion system, GM’s goal to lead with product desirability has allowed high-volume sales amid crisis after crisis, Barra said.
When asked who she believed to be the most influential person in the past century of the automotive industry, Barra responded Harley Earl, the industry’s first automotive designer and progenitor of the GM Design department, soon to be in its 50th year.
“Nothing happens in our business until you sell a vehicle, and that vehicle has to be beautiful. I give that credit to our design team,” Barra said. “We’re not just in the movement business; we’re in the fashion business.”
Jackie Charniga covers General Motors for the Free Press. Reach her at jcharniga@freepress.com.
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