Tag Archives: Mary Barra

Language and Leadership

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Remember those radio commercials that included the line “People judge you by the language that you use”?

Well, an on-line tutoring firm, Preply, has taken that idea and applied it to making a determination of the “intelligence” of CEOs based on transcripts of public appearances available on YouTube.

The firm analyzed from 60 to 180 minutes of dialog and assessed the execs based on:

  • Vocabulary breadth: The extent of word diversity
  • Vocabulary sophistication: The complexity of words used
  • Textual readability: The complexity of sentence structures and ideas
  • Critical thinking: The quality of argument construction, deconstruction, and analysis
  • Contextual relevance: The speaker’s ability to interconnect the dialogue with broader contexts or other fields

That led to the scoring based on a 100-point scale.

And the auto CEOs included in the rankings don’t score in the top 10, not even Elon Musk.

Ranking first is Demis Hassabis, CEO of AI firm DeepMind, with a score of 87.33. Presumably he is exceedingly articulate (and/or has great speechwriters) because Stephen Schwarzman of investment firm Blackstone is in second place with a score of 74.33, a precipitous drop.

As for the people in auto, Musk is in 16th position with 64.33, behind Brian Chesky of Airbnb with 65.00 and ahead of Whitney Herd of Bumble, at 64.00. (Strange correlation with Airbnb and Bumble. . . .)

Mary Barra of GM isn’t far behind, in 20th position with 63.00.

There is one more U.S. auto exec on the list of the top 100: Ford CEO Jim Farley at 98, with a score of 32.00.

That just seems mean.

GM Making Money—Thanks to Trucks

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By Gary S. Vasilash

General Motors reported exceedingly good earnings for Q2: non-adjusted net income attributed to stockholders of $2.57 billion. It was $1.69 billion last year.

The company thinks it will make a lot more this year than it previously expected:

  • $9.3 billion to $10.7 billion is the new target
  • $8.4 billion to $9.9 billion was the previous target

Getting Deluxe for Bucks

A big part of this: full-size truck and SUV sales, especially the high-trim trucks.

  • At GMC 70% of Sierra HD trucks were lux. Some 50% of Sierra light-duty trucks were. And 74% of Canyons were loaded.
  • At Chevy, about 75% were top trim models.

Nine Chevy SUVs—One Economical

Of course, GM points out that the Chevy Trax, an “affordable SUV” (starts at $20,400) had an increase in sales of 115%. (Last year it sold a total of 26,597 Trax models so if the sales were to double this year compared to last, it would still be fewer than Blazer 2022 sales, 67,246.)

Where’s the Money Going?

And regarding trucks, GM noted it is investing to “strengthen our industry-leading full-size truck and SUV business.”

With:

  • $1-billion invested in a plant in Flint, Michigan for next-gen heavy-duty trucks
  • $0.5-billion in Arlington, Texas for next-gen full-size SUVs
  • $0.6-billion for next-gen light-duty trucks

Maybe not the crazy money being thrown at electric vehicles, but clearly there are plans in place for next-gen trucks and SUVs that will continue to haul in the money.

EV Issues

As for EVs, the company built 50,000 in the first half and plans to build 100,000 in the second.

What’s interesting is that in Q2 it sold 15,700 EVs, which is down from the 20,700 it sold in Q1 ’23 and the 16,300 it sold in Q4 2022.

Clearly, not the right direction.

In terms of EV sales, the Chevy Bolt has been making the biggest difference. Through the first half there were 33,659 sold.

The Bolt Will Be Back

However, GM had announced that the Bolt, which doesn’t use the company’s Ultium battery technology, was going out of production. . .until today, when it announced there will be the development of a new Bolt, that will use the battery tech.

GM chair and CEO Mary Barra said, “Our customer’s love today’s Bolt. It has been delivering record sales and some of the highest customer satisfaction and loyalty scores in the industry.”

Starting at $26,500, it is also one of the most cost-competitive EVs in the market, which undoubtedly accounts for more than a slight amount of that popularity.

As long as GM can keep the price low, the Bolt should continue to do well.

If GM ups the price significantly, then its EV sales numbers will grow, but at an anemic pace.

Tesla Q2 ‘21

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If it hadn’t last $2-million on Bitcoin, the number would have been bigger

By Gary S. Vasilash

A few things from Tesla Q2 numbers

Consider this:

Models S/X production numbers were:

  • Q2 2020:      6,326
  • Q3 2020:      16,992
  • Q4 2020:      16,097
  • Q1 2021:      0
  • Q2 2021:      2,340

Were they not electric vehicles, the phrase “running out of gas” comes to mind.

To be fair to the people in the Tesla plants, for the Models 3/Y:

  • Q1 2021:      180,338
  • Q2 2021:      204,084

So they’re certainly busy.

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Here’s an interesting understatement:

“Solving full autonomy is a difficult engineering challenge in which we continue to believe can only be solved through the collection of large, real-world datasets and cutting edge AI.”

The emphasis on the dataset comes from the more than one-million Teslas the company is collecting data from.

However, there are plenty of companies that believe that in addition to the critical datasets there is a need for a sensor suite on the vehicles in order to assure that the real world is discerned by the vehicle in real time.

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The company also stated in its report to shareholders, “Public sentiment and support for electric vehicles seems to be at a never-before-seen inflection point. We continue to work hard to drive down costs and increase our rate of production to make electric vehicles accessible to as many people as possible.”

Presumably much of this growing support among the public is predicated on the availability of EVs from OEMs other than Tesla. Vehicles like the Audi e-tron and the Mustang Mach-E.

That last phrase—“accessible to as many people as possible”—seems to echo what Mary Barra has been saying for some time.  At the Aspen Ideas Festival in June Barra said, “As we move to an all-electric, zero-emissions future, it is on us to lead positive change and implement inclusive solutions that bring everyone along, especially our employees and communities.”

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So here’s a question: Is it possible that its Q2 net income of $1.1-billion, its largest-ever quarterly profit, notwithstanding, Tesla is coming from behind for a change?

Behind in terms of the development of automated driving, as it tries not to use an array of sensors.

Behind in terms of having vehicles that come at a price point that are more affordable?

As for the first, the need for things like LiDAR seem clear.

As for the second, time will tell whether companies like Volkswagen and GM are truly going to give Tesla a run for its money on the closer-to-entry end of the EV market.