Tesla and other EV startups, meanwhile, don't have the same scale as legacy automakers. Other legacy automakers including Ford, BMW and Toyota aren't expected to start production with dedicated EV platforms for another few years because of the time it takes to develop and build out plants. The leadership team met with people including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google officials, venture capital investors and officials from Stanford University, where Barra earned her master's degree in business administration. In 2015, Barra took a team of executives on a field trip to Silicon Valley to identify potential disruptions on the horizon. We want to lead the transformation," said Barra, now 60. "We started to say, OK, we don't want to be disrupted. Others believed popular ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft could further diminish the relevance of the Big Three automakers. Tesla was grabbing more attention and threatening to make the gas-guzzling fleets of legacy automakers look like relics. The cuts laid the groundwork for GM to grow in a different way.Īs GM worked to become nimbler, Barra became increasingly sensitive to the signs of change bubbling up across the industry. She added that the board supports the changes Barra and her team have been making. "All that was about getting the company in better financial shape, in better operational shape, to be in a position to actually start then on the next journey," said Patricia Russo, independent lead director of GM's board of directors. The moves, made over several years, would prove to be deeply unpopular with politicians and the United Auto Workers.
Under her tenure, Barra would ultimately slash headcount by 27% to 157,000 employees and dramatically shrink the company's global footprint by exiting markets including Australia, Europe and Russia. "No one has as many vehicles as we are going to have by 2025," Barra said in an interview with CNBC in January. battery plants and launch 30 electric models globally, such as the GMC Hummer EV. Last year, GM said it planned to invest $30 billion in electric vehicles by 2025, including to revamp existing plants, build U.S. The gains would last only a few months but deepened executives' conviction that they had picked the right path.
GM's stock that week jumped more than 11% to about $45 a share - marking the largest weekly increase at the time under Barra's tenure as CEO. The following week, GM publicly declared its belief in an "all-electric future," marking a pivotal moment that would start the legacy automaker on its most ambitious shift since its founding in 1908. That was the week GM's path was decided, said the people, who declined to be named because the discussions were confidential. In the following days, executives met multiple times to discuss the platform's potential and to hash out a strategy on electric vehicles, according to several people who were at the previously unreported meetings.
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