If you love technology, get ready for an exciting ride, General Motors’ chief executive Mary Barra told me last night.
She was speaking at a gala dinner for local dignitaries, dealers and hacks, on her first big trip to Europe in the GM hot seat, timed for the introduction of the all-important Vauxhall Astra, and could not disguise her enthusiasm for the on-rush of technology.
The automotive world's highest-ranking female executive, who trained as an electrical engineer, Barra told a rapt audience that she believed there would be four key ways in which cars would change quickly in future: in the sophistication and efficiency of their powerplants, the way they were owned and shared, the way they are connected with other aspects of our lives, and the way we drive them.
Nobody could have a complete vision of how things would pan out, she said, but she was entirely undaunted because she believed that following its upheaval in the later 2000s, GM has once again assembled world-beating technical teams, not least in Europe where Opel Vauxhall was “critically important to GM”.
Speaking crisply and quickly with a fluent delivery, Barra spoke of her commitment to building GM into “the most valued automobile company in the business".
She enthusiastically backed the contention of GM's European boss, Karl-Thomas Neumann, that the forthcoming Astra (200kg lighter, bigger inside and smaller outside) was “the best Opel ever built”, for which the company already held 30,000 orders.
Barra did her best to dismiss decisively the idea of a merger with FCA, aggressively proposed in over recent weeks by Fiat Chrysler's Sergio Marchionne.
"This is not a good topic," she said. "We have studied the proposal in tremendous detail and we taken expert advice. We are focused on doing the right thing for GM interests and have concluded this is not in the best interests of GM shareholders." She said the view "resonated" with GM shareholders.
On other subjects, Barra promised an eventual, well-co-ordinated return to Europe for Cadillac, though the concentration for now was on US and Chinese markets. She promised that an electric car would be one of 29 new models the company had planned for Europe between now and 2020.
Another debutante would be an Insignia-sized SUV. She undertook to take "a much more planned and proactive" attitude to producing right-hand-drive versions of forthcoming models (though the battery-powered Bolt, planned for Europe, won't be sold in the UK because the steering wheel is on the wrong side).
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Mary Barra's Prophesies:
1) "sophistication and efficiency of their power-plants";
2) "the way they were owned and shared";
3) "the way they are connected with other aspects of our lives";
4) "the way we drive them".
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My responses:
1) They are plenty efficient as they are -- more now means more to go wrong;
2) I'll own mine outright, thank you -- keep your grubby mitts off it;
3) My car is my car and my life is my life -- best keep them separated;
4) I have a manual gearbox pickup truck -- and seem to drive it just fine.
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Do the math: a manual gearbox 2WD small $24K pickup truck lasts me 25 years and 250,000 miles with $500 of repairs; a $35K Toyota Prius lasts 15 years and needs a ~$3K battery and who knows what else. So, what is the recycling cost of that first Prius, and the energy consumption required to make another one --- in order to get up to 25 years?
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Mary should consider joining Sergio with a GM/FCA merger so that he can set her straight on some things....
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If you don't think GM can
GM, Purveyor of Thrills