One of these days. . . .

By Gary S. Vasilash

General Motors is a legacy auto manufacturer that positioned itself as an EV champion. Back in 2021 corporate execs, including Mary Barra, chairman and CEO, said they intended to be all-electric by 2035.

Plans change, of course.

“We have to meet customers where they are,” Barra said yesterday at a meeting of the Automotive Press Association in Detroit.

She didn’t mean in a dealership.

GM, like other OEMs, discovered in 2025 that (a) customers were not buying EVs at a rate that had been anticipated and (b) there is still a keen interest in the customer base for vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.

Still, Barra is confident that EVs are the end game so the company is going to keep offering and developing EVs.

She claimed that 80% of EV customers say their next vehicle will be an EV.

She probably wishes, however, there were more of them.

In 2025 GM delivered 169,764 EVs in the US, so if every one of them went into a GM store only 135,811 would come out with an EV.

Barra said that based on what GM analysts have determined it takes about six months to have a good sense of what the real market impact is when something significant happens to the EV market, like the elimination of the $7,500 tax credit at the end of September 2025. So when Q1 2026 wraps up, there will be a better idea of where EVs are going.

She said there are a few things that will make customers more inclined to get an EV. Yes, there is the instant torque provided by the electric motors, which is always something EV enthusiasts cite.

But she said there needs to be (1) more affordable EVs (the average transaction price for an EV in December 2025 was in excess of $58,000 according to Kelley Blue Book, which is certainly not the defintion of “affordable”) and (2) there needs to be a more robust charging infrastructure.

The way things are looking, even if EVs gain great ground there will still be a place for vehicles with engines under their hoods, a place that in non-trivial. Barra pointed out that even if EVs were to take 50% of the market at some point, that still means 50% for gasoline-powered vehicles.