General Motors beat expectations in the third quarter as it made a little more money on its current products. The company also hinted that it would finally meet the most critical milestone in its journey to become an EV leader.
Today’s installment of the Morning Dump is going electric like Dylan, though hopefully with better results. GM is doing better than expected and Tesla, likely, will report that sales were up at the cost of lower margins. What do investors want to know? When the non-robotaxi cheap car is happening.
Lucid has continued to report higher sales and continued to lose money. It’s going to do another raise to see if it can keep going long enough to produce the Gravity and a smaller CUV. This month is the 20th anniversary of Jalopnik and the site has been sold. This wasn’t a shock, but it’s important.
EV Variable Profitability Comes This Quarter
GM’s stated goal this year was to reach profitability in 2024. When that was announced the assumption was that GM’s EV sales would be way higher than they are now, but it sounds like GM is going to pull it off at some point in Q4.
This is a big deal. General Motors has been making electric cars for years and has invested in a platform, Ultium, that can be produced at a large enough scale that the company can start to squeeze out some sort of profit.
With the exception of Tesla, no large non-Chinese automaker I can think of is truly profitable when it comes to electric cars. The investments are too high, the market too competitive, and the scale just isn’t there yet. By doing everything on one platform GM has gotten a little closer.
Here’s GM CFO Paul Jacobson explaining this in more detail, as reported by the Detroit Free Press from the company’s earnings call:
Jacobson told reporters during the earnings call that the reason it is so important to reach variable profitability on EVs is because, “Variable profit is a really important step on the journey towards profitability because what it means is you’ve reached an inflection point where the profits you produce on a per unit vehicle start to go to make up for some of the fixed costs that you’ve already put in. We’ve made substantial investments in our EV business over the last several years so getting to variable profit positive means that we scale, our (pretax) losses start to come down.”
Jacobson said GM is running its battery cell plant, a joint venture called Ultium Cells LLC, in Warren, Ohio, at 80% capacity and its plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, is running at 40% capacity.
“Every cell that it produces is cheaper under our joint venture arrangement because we’re absorbing the cost of the facility,” Jacobson said.
Technology is important, and GM’s Ultium isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but having the most efficient platform in the world in terms of range is less important for a company than having one that’s efficient in terms of production. After a lot of work, GM is getting there, helped in large part by its sub-$30k (after incentives) Chevy Equinox EV.
Will GM be net profitable from the year on EVs? Nope. But it’s going in the right direction and if it can be net profitable on EVs next year while also being profitable on everything else that’s a good sign for the company.
Tesla’s Investors Don’t Seem Swayed By The Cybercab
We have many thoughts about the Tesla Cybercab around here and we’re not alone. Tesla is going to have its quarterly earnings call tomorrow afternoon, and investors are already starting to post their questions on Say, which is a platform that the company uses that allows people to vote on which questions get answered.
A lot of concerns seem to revolve around the affordable Tesla, including the top two questions:
We’ve been over this, but the theory is that Elon Musk is bored with making cars and killed the $25,000 Model 2 in order to make it the Cybercab, which is way sexier.
The problem with this strategy is that the Cybercab is a long-term project, and retail investors want to keep seeing the line go up-and-to-the-right, and many of them, based on voting behavior, seem to think that a sub-$25k Tesla is key to that plan.
That’s maybe true, although Tesla’s sales rebound in the third quarter was likely due to discounting, so the company may report lower margins tomorrow. How selling a lower-cost car could contribute to higher margins is an open question, unless Tesla thinks it can do so while also getting a $7,500 tax credit (thus making it theoretically a $17k car) or it can produce the car more efficiently.
Other questions revolve around wait times at service centers, the Tesla Roadster, and how the Cybercab service might actually work.
Lucid Is Raising More Money
Every few months the government of Saudi Arabia, via the Public Investment Fund, dumps more money into electric automaker Lucid. This is the main reason why the company, which only makes one very good car, is still in business while others are struggling.
Lucid needs to make more vehicles that’ll appeal to a larger swath of the population, and in order to do that it needs cash. A lot of cash. So much cash. Last week it was reported that the company was trying to raise about $1.67 billion from a public offering:
“While the offering helps boost liquidity, the fact it resorted to issuing equity after such a precipitous decline for the stock over the past several quarters is a major red flag,” said Garrett Nelson, vice president and senior equity analyst at CFRA Research.
If there’s any good news for Lucid it’s that the company did manage to get a bit more than expected, somewhere around $1.75 billion. That money will go towards the expansion of its Arizona plant, building a new plant in Saudi Arabia, building out a sales service network abroad, and getting ready for the launch of the Lucid Gravity.
Jalopnik Sold To Static Media
I’m also out at Jalopnik FYI. Because it got sold though, not because of RFK Jr. https://t.co/QFvX7vKceF
— Rory Carroll (@Rory_Carroll) October 21, 2024
The site that gave many of us our first job in automotive media has been sold. Jalopnik will now be a part of Static Media, which also owns SlashGear and The Takeout.
It’s been common knowledge in the industry that the site has been for sale for about a year, though potential suitors I’ve spoken with couldn’t see a path forward that didn’t involve massive staff reductions. The bright spot here is that almost all of the staff has kept their jobs, although EIC and pal Rory Carroll is not one of them.
It’s the 20th anniversary of Jalopnik this month and we wish everyone there the best of luck.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Here’s Bob Dylan making everyone at the Newport Folk Festival mad by playing “Like A Rolling Stone” with an electric guitar. The ’60s were wild, man.
The Big Question
What milestone does a company need to hit in order to be a “successful” electric carmaker?
Man, Rory, too? Who the hell is going to be in charge of the website, then? Hopefully they don’t bring in some maximum-clickbait goon to take over. 🙁 Static’s record (and private equity backing) gives me cause for concern. SlashGear is alright, but what they’ve done to The Takeout after acquisition is unforgivable.
Interesting that GM would reach profitability when other manufacturers who went all-in on EVs are still losing billions on them. I hope Munro does a breakdown of the Equinox to see how they pulled it off.
Edit: Sad to hear about Jalopnik, but that site has been dead to me since Mercedes left so all I will say is everyone go sign up to be a member here so we can keep this site from going to the private equity dogs the way every other good car site seems to.
I drove the Equinox EV the other day and it was quite nice and much friendlier to drive than a Tesla, if that makes sense. it wasn’t trying to solve problems with car/user interface that don’t exist, or just to be weird like a Tesla does.
for just being a normal car to do normal things in a package familiar to everyone, I was really impressed.
Hope they get Jalopnik back to a better management and drop non-car oriented stuff. I was a fan since Murilee was writing for them and man did the quality start suffering right before the Autopian was founded.
It became politicized and not just about cars. Politics surrounding cars is one thing on a car mag, but if I want other types of politics, I can hit up Politco or MSNBC or Foxnews or HuffPo or well, any other of the hundreds of political rags out there. I want car content and not politics in my car mags.
I have not read an article on there in years.
It now seems like a car site for those who find cars annoying or offensive. Every time I’ve read an article from them as of late, I’ve lost brain cells. I stopped being even remotely invested in Jalopnik once all of their talent left and joined the Autopian.
Just bought my wife a Hummer EV SUV about a month ago, it’s fantastic! I was not an EV person prior, but did own a B class EV briefly. As far as Jalopnik goes, what a garbage site, it’s a car themed political site where they hate cars. I finally had enough and stopped visiting their site about 6 months ago.
Graverobber is the EIC now! He’s been there the longest 😀
One day we will lose Rob, and that will be my last tie to the Old Site. I’m still waiting for NP/ND to drop every morning right when I settle in with my cup of coffee. But I know it won’t last forever.
Jalopnik was done once “Drive Free or Die” became “Toe the (Socialist, Urbanist, Environmentalist) Party Line or Get Put Back in the Grays”.
The writers would tee some bait up like “Stealing from trains is OK because they’re just corporations” or “Here’s why one tragic incident proves all trucks are bad and their drivers hate cyclists”, or “I was depressed driving a Bugatti because it’s not climate friendly” and just let the crowd compete to see who could virtue signal the most.
I’m not even conservative and I found it unbearably obnoxious. I won’t say this site is perfect, but it is clearly better.
There were definitely a writer two that Orloved writing those types of articles.
I don’t disagree, but at least Rafe knew something about cars. There were several writers in the P.A. times that did not know jack and/or shit about cars. The upside of this is at least I could get through the articles of the day faster by skipping their posts.
I applaud DT and JT (and BB) for hiring folks that appear to have genuine love for motorized transportation. They may not be perfect (let him/her who is, cast the first stone), but I don’t skip any articles here based on the byline.
“Clearly better” is the understatement of the year!
We saw the writing on the wall for years at Jalopnik. It was awesome, but it’s been going very quickly downhill for some time. Sad, as I loved poking my nose in to see the car news. The fact that it was supremely difficult to post to the comments was annoying as well.
20 years of Jalopnik and I never got out of the grays….
I never even got into the greys. I tried so many times to get a functional account to try to comment but for some reason couldn’t get even that set up. Oh well. Happy to not be there anymore.
The comment system seemed to be part of what was wrong over there. That and the fact that it was linked to the other GMO sites whose bread and butter was shit stirring. You combine a site that attracts trolls with a comment system that rewards trolls, and you end up with a big ol’ mess.
Does this mean Jalopnik will return to it’s orange logo as it should be? (I mean, green is great, but not for that)
Just don’t bring over any Bicyclist, New Yorkers, to the party here please. Jalopnik was dead many years ago because of that guy.
Yes, and nothing against bicycles or New York…but NOT a car town.
RIP resident New Yorker Matt Hardigree. 🙂
This is funny, but Matt’s writing doesn’t typically have the usual NYC combination of both implied superiority over and total ignorance of anything west of Newark or east of Lake Tahoe.
“Whaddya mean drivin ta Yonkas isn’t a long road trip?”
I hope Jalopnik gets it together because they still put out decent content every now and then…and like most of us I migrated over here from there. If I recall correctly I literally followed a link here that V10emous posted in the Jalop comments section. So the site certainly has some nostalgia value for me and I never want to see folks potentially lose their jobs.
…that being said, I think this site surpassed Jalopnik years ago and for me personally the content here has always been a cut above pretty much any other car blog. It’s clearly a quality over quantity approach here and boy does it show.
Agreed, it’s like they workshopped the paradigm over there, and then perfected it after founding this site.
They still have some good stuff over there, but for some reason I’ve never been able to post comments.
It’s the same for me! For whatever reason it would never let me create a Kinja account.
Yeah it was one of those things that I could’ve fixed but lacked interest in doing so.
Waaay back I could post, but I disagreed one time with the party line and posted some US Government and major university publications to support my evidently “offensive” opinion. That account was perma blocked and none of the accounts created after that were granted posting permissions.
I wasn’t into bashing people because of their political party affiliation, gender, home state, bedroom preferences, religion or desire to drive an ICE car. So I left that politivehicle site to come here to a real car site where cars come first. Never looked back.
I was put back in the grays after disagreeing with a thin skinned writer over there about whether a Taycan was the best car ever built.
Or maybe it was when I opined that writing editorials about how stealing from trains was cool, wasn’t very cool.
Wow. Risky opinion on the whole ‘stealing isn’t cool’ idea.
Your name is probably on some future re-education camp guest list.
2020-22 was a very strange time in media.
SAME! It’s like they didn’t want to hear from us, even though I kept trying to warn DT about buying that rat’s nest (pick one).
What an origin story!
So, I bemoaned the idea that branding makes a difference in the article where GM is shuttering the Ultium brand. But now we find out it’s about to become profitable, and they’re moving away from it? Weird.
Sounds about GM.
I think they are just moving away from calling it “Ultium”. I didn’t get the impression they were moving to a different battery.
I agree. I just find it interesting they become profitable under the Ultium brand then ditch it.
Maybe Tom can start posting over here?
That’s a shame about Rory. Him and Tom were the only ones left I liked reading over there.
I also enjoy Rob’s Nice Price or No Dice, no disrespect to Mark’s Shitbox Showdown. They are both great!
Remember when it was Nice Price or Crack Pipe? The hedge funders that took control of (and subsequently hollowed out) Jalopnik made silly changes like that – and drove much of their writing talent over to Autopian.
Can’t offend that juicy crack smoker demo.
I sincerely doubt it was the hedge fund people demanding that change during peak woke.
It wasn’t. The comment section went buck wild talking all sorts of crazy shit like how “it might offend (some specific) tribe in New Mexico”, lol.
That was not the case. Multiple readers sent in emails stating that the series name was insensitive, so Editorial decided to make the change, not Management.
With that being said, most of the other stuff (more slideshows, less weird, etc) was passed down from the top.
Based on what Jalopnik became over the past few years, I’m surprised anyone bought them. Let’s hope the new owners clean house and return to something like what they once were. Or maybe not… The Autopian is clearly superior anyway.
It’s not the brand, it’s the people. One of these days that lesson will sink in… my sincere hope is that the success of the Autopian will be the bell-cow that will lead a new era in good, substantive automotive journalism.
Yup, once they let the writers lean harder and harder into politics, it became a cesspool- there was no difference between it and reddit (and a lot of their content was lifted from there). While not perfect, I really appreciate the fact that the Autopian staff do try to maintain standards and keep it about cars and car culture.
And almost every cut-and-paste article was a series of links and embedded videos of influencer content [shudders typing those words out]. I think of myself as a fairly centrist misanthrope fairly left when it comes to people doing their own thing and being who they are if it doesn’t hurt others, but holy Athena, some of the crazy comments there would make even my Turbo Liberal middle sister shake her head. V10omous brought up that “it’s OK to steal from trains” article and I remembered that one in particular as a reason to leave.
There was an entire series of editorials about the construction of Jeff Bezos’ yacht!
It’s hard to imagine a “story” having less reason to be written up as an automotive article, let alone multiple articles, but it was an excuse to get the Kinja warriors fired up with “eat the rich” energy over and over again, which seemed to be the overarching editorial directive.
I don’t get the whole “eat the rich” thing. They don’t even taste good. 😉
Korean barbecue sauce helps a lot. Not sure why?
I mean, sure, I get it—a certain subset of the rich are lean thanks to their personal trainers and gyms and the organic food they consume makes them one of the healthier meats to eat, but that crap belongs on a food site! Besides, once they get old, the fibers are still going to be tough either way. But you also don’t want their kids, because of all the drugs and plastic.
From a consumer perspective, selling affordable cars that people actually want to buy.
It’d help if they made the cars attractive, instead of a pregnant rollerskate like the Bolt. Toyota finally figured it out with the Prius that an attractive car will sell better than one running purely on merit.
It also helps when your CEO isn’t killing your brand vibe.
I say the measure of success for a company is the ability to regularly return earnings to its shareholders. So, any company that pays a dividend which is contributed to by its sales of EVs. Which at this moment I think is nobody in the US.
Edit: oh, and they have to be able to do this without government subsidies.
This is kind of thinking that really only applies to companies like utilities and banks (though arguably it should apply to “tech” companies that just sell ads, like Google and Facebook). The auto industry is going through massive upheaval at the moment, and a company like GM paying a dividend is effectively saying “we can’t think of anything better to do with this money, so here you go.” That would significantly sour my investing thesis on GM, since what they really need to do is invest in better tech, better supply chains, and better management.
One could argue that 100% reinvestment with 0 dividends is a smart company, a company worth investing your own money in, even a company on the pathway to success. It seems tougher to say that’s the definition of a “successful” electric car company.
I think strategic reinvestment is smart. A truly successful company should be able to both reinvest and pay a dividend.
But I think the ability to pay a dividend from earning says a lot.
I prefer to be able to make good money from a company without having to sell it.
They should be able to both reinvest strategically AND pay shareholders a decent return. If you can’t do both then you have issues.
Also, I tend to take a more technical, capitalistic approach to how I view corporations. So, outside of MBA classrooms I tend to be in the minority.
I still have not gotten to the bottom of whether GM is pulling the rug out on EV Equinox owners after the “complimentary 8 year connectivity” ends. I’m assuming this translates to a subscription of some kind to GM, but it isn’t clear.
Honestly, this would still be an issue to me that I would consider another brand over. Especially if you can’t rip out the headunit and replace it. Remarkable to me that they would take the ability to connect your phone to the car and paywall that.
Connectivity to what? I just tried looking at the website and all I saw was OnStar and needing to pay for SuperCruise after 3 years.
I don’t have a problem paying for something like SuperCruise, assuming it is constantly being improved and relies on a map database that someone needs to maintain.
Android Automotive (not Android Auto) requires a data subscription for some features. It’s quite annoying because you still get prompted even when you’re hotspotted to your phone.
I think the mark of any successful car company is when you go to Hertz and rent one of their cars, drive it for a week, give it back, and still don’t know what the hell car you had the whole time.
If that were the case, Nissan would be the most successful car company in history.
counterpoint. You definitely know/remember what you’re driving if they give you a Nissan. And not in a good way.
The only rentals I’ve had that I actively hated were a Dodge Caliber and Chevy Aveo. I know I’ve driven Nissans but I don’t remember what they were or anything about them.
Edit: Wait! That’s not true! I do recall some Nissan having a ridiculously huge gas tank that I got almost 600 miles out of. No idea what it was though…
Aveo rental? what brand was renting that? I didn’t know anyone was going that small with their rental fleet. That’s just mean.
It was a looooong time ago. Small cars used to be a common rental option before everyone went SUV crazy.
Yeah the small car with no options penalty box used to be a rental lot staple.
As a frequent work traveler to LA from the midwest in the early ’00s, it was almost certain you got an Aveo, Versa, or Yaris as your compact rental car. Frankly Versa was far superior to the other 2.
Avis/Budget. My Aveo rental was memorable only because the front left strut assembly was held in place by the weight of the car. The top of the strut wasn’t attached to the strut tower. When I returned it, the location manager said that they had an appointment to get it fixed in a few days, but since it was still ‘functional’, they were still renting it out. Off-airport locations usually seem to have the most clapped out cars.
2014 Town and Country wins the hate award x 1000. I forgave many other Chrysler rental mishaps, but stranding me swore me off anything in anyway related.
Oh, and it was full of the important stuff you move that doesn’t go in a moving van.
I think if they make money on the car then that’s pretty much the deal. And would asterisk the “non-Chinese automaker” comment as they’re fairly well subsidized.
I’m no Tesla fan, and the 2 seater taxi thing was ugh, glad investors are finally snapping back a bit on the shenannigans, but if they actually make money on their cars that’s the key. And depending on how this election goes, the us rebates may go away(again), so the Equinox(and other domestics) could lose their $7500 discount which could definitely hurt, but think Tesla may do ok without it cause ‘luxury’.
That sucks about Jalopnik but from the exodus of talent over the years and previous ownerships it’s not unexpected sadly.
That’s pretty company dependent, don’t ya think? Rivian selling 50k units, in many ways, would be just as impressive as Tesla’s 450k. Every company’s case is unique. In addition, leasing (which almost everyone should be doing these days) is a big variable to factor in.
If someone wants to go through every company, have at you. But, I’ve got Juul settlement money to spend at some point today. lol
Other than profitability , I don’t know what else it would take to be considered a successful EV company. Begging for another $1.75 billion in order to field the Gravity in hopes that it will solidify the company just seems like Lucid dreaming.
I think Lucid has a distribution problem more than anything. By all accounts their product kicks hell out of their direct competition (electric S class, the elderly Model S), but they only have like a dozen dealerships (sorry, “Lucid Studios”) in the entire country. In Texas they only have two, one in Dallas and one in Houston. The fact that they don’t even have a store in “$400,000 is the new $100,000” Austin is a huge miss. One assumes their factory in Phoenix isn’t running at anything like capacity yet.
I see a few in the Austin area. I see more Lucids than I do Fiskers or even Nissan (Leaf and Aurea (or whatever their newest is)), but that’s not saying much.
The lucids have some compelling features but I don’t love the look of the air not that I can afford one.
That said I would much rather give money to Elon than to the Saudis if I am going to have any preference. Not sure how that isn’t a bigger thing but maybe it’s because so few people have lucid money.
At this point buying a lucid is *taking* money from the saudis.
We went and looked at a new Chevy Equinox EV last week. GM might have stumbled on a few EV launches lately but they really did a nice job on this one. Its one of the first EVs I’ve seen where the price of the vehicle and it happening to be an EV isn’t such a massive financial disconnect. The one we looked at was $34k. When compared to other EVs that’s a pretty good deal. So maybe for once GM can pull it off? And if they’re making billions hopefully they will use that income to better position themselves in the EV market.
This success clearly indicates that that they will stop production on this Equinox next year. Trust GM to figure something out just to cancel it.
Don’t tell the proletariat, but when I saw the Equinox EV for the first time I thought it looked pretty close to an EV hatchback. It definitely doesn’t look as tall as the regular Equinox. If I were in the market for an EV I’d take a long, hard look at it.
I drove one the other day and it was really nice, I was def impressed with how it’s been done.
I would say to be a successful EV maker, a builder would need to:
-Have 50.1% of sales be EV, or else they are just an automaker that makes some EV’s.
-Be profitable, since you know. capitalism.
-Be self-sustaining, not relying on government subsidies or constant inflows of cash from elsewhere to stay afloat (Sorry Lucid)
-Have a ‘significant’ number of sales and production per year, otherwise Top Gear could have been declared successful with the Geoff. Well, they were. but it was rubbish.
I think in order to become a successful electric car maker one must have meaningful sales figures, making money on them (not just as a pyramid scheme), and have less and less recalls over time.
*pencil scritching sounds*
***LESS*** recalls over time
MEANINGFUL (??) sales figures
de-base pyramid paradigm??? (how to?)