GM Aims to Sell 1 Million EVs a Year

With the rapid and steady growth of the electric vehicle segment in the last few years, it’s no wonder a lot of automakers are making a move in developing battery-powered cars for their respective brands.

And General Motors does not want to be left behind as the company’s CEO says they are looking to sell 1 million EVs every year.

Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, told Bloomberg News that she is predicting the company’s future to sell a million EVs “sometime in the future.”

“This is what we really believe is the future of transportation,” she said.

GM first ventured into the electric vehicle market with the release of the Chevrolet Bolt plug-in hybrid in 2012. At the time, former GM CEO Dan Akerson wanted to sell 60,000 units of the car, but the automaker was only able to sell 24,361 in the United States that year.

Barra, however, remains optimistic as the company now has decades of battery research to back their cause. A decline in the cost of batteries and more stringent global regulations on emissions are also seen as a helpful way to reduce the production costs for electric cars.

When Chevrolet introduced Volt in 2010, the price of batteries would go as high as $1,000 per kilowatt-hour. The numbers are down to $200 today, according to industry analysts, and are predicted to fall within the $50 per kWh by 2025.

At present, GM has reportedly developed 18 different prototypes of electric vehicles ranging from sedans to SUVs, sports cars, and autonomous vehicles, all of which were built on the same skateboard-style platform.

Provided that all prototypes make it to final assembly, they would pave the way for an onslaught of battery-powered vehicles from GM and could definitely make the company’s target sales a possibility. It also supports GM’s 2017 announcement of introducing at least 20 EVs by 2023.