CES despatch: Totally Fan-Girl'ing on Mary Barra! Woot!

Ok - anyone who knows me just did a spit-take at that headline. I don’t “woot” and I don’t usually “fan-girl”. But whoa, Ms. Barra is the shizz!

First, I love that she did her keynote from her hometown, the historic Fox Theater in Detroit. I’m sure there was all kinds of pressure from the CTA to be in person. Baller move.

Her clear statements and commitments were just as “baller”: Zero crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero congestion.

It’s not like GM is the only automotive newsmaker at CES - it’s just the  most impressive one I saw on display. Having been in strategy rooms for more than 20 years, I applaud the clarity and focus that she and the GM team got to - in a tough year. The work, persuasion and policy efforts it must have taken to get there require a hat-tip to this consummate leader.

So what does this actually mean?

• Zero crashes: It’s clear that they are continuing to invest in and leverage their prescient acquisition of cruise. Watching the video of the self driving “cab” in action, I know I want to go for that ride - even though I absolutely love driving! Uber and Lyft trained us, and now we’ll make that autonomous jump quite easily, I suspect. Change management case, par excellence. I’m worried that now I don’t have a leg to stand on, when my kids put off taking driving classes. GM’s promise of having personal autonomous vehicles on the road by 2025 means I should just relax about the whole driving thing. I probably will be the last one on the road with my hands on the wheel, of course….
• Zero emissions: Barra recruited to being carbon neutral by 2040, investing $35B in EV and AV by 2025. The vision is to launch 30 EVs by 2035 across price-points. Every once in a while I’ll tweet about how excited I am about the auto majors and their EV plans - yes, Tesla broke new ground BUT it’s the majors that will drive large-scale change. Even if they resisted change before, we have to applaud them finally getting their act together. When they act, the ecosystem changes! I’m most impressed by Barra’s commitment around heavy duty EV trucks. Anyone who’s driven one (or sat in one - I confess I didn’t move the truck I tried out more than a couple of feet) will tell you that the sheer power required to move one of those heavies boggles the mind. Committing to range in those behemoths is laudable. She’s taking a true systems approach to this - setting out plans for all US operations to be powered by renewable energy by 2025 in the US. 

• Zero congestion: I had the opportunity in my CSO roles at HARMAN and Vontier to see the evolution of Brightdrop over the years. GM’s continues commitment to that vision, which includes battery production capabilities, SW investments, etc. makes that last mile electrification and driver assistance/autonomy edge closer every day. The clear call-out to startups to build on Brightdrop capabilities, and developers to plug into the Ultifi software platform (Linux-based) was also a clarion call for innovation.

There was much more she was gesturing at:

• China continues to be a key strategic focus when it comes to EV manufacturing 
• The GM Ultium cell will be chemistry agnostic
• They’re drawing their market very differently going into rail, air and sea - Barra announced deals with Wabtec locomotives (rail), Leibherr (auxillary power for aircraft), and PUREwatercraft (boating)
• Supply chain risk mitigation with semiconductor partnerships (watch this space!)
• EV charging infrastructure with 750M in investments across the US and canada
• The Electric Silverado at $40K is pretty interesting - want to see how that works out. That’s the proof of the pudding right there.
• I wasn’t blown away by the diversity on display - apart from Barra and one EV Engineering lead (Nicole Kratz), it was the usual Detroit spectrum (!) and she gestured as a 25M investment in climate equity. Let’s see what that’s about.
• Partnerships have always been foundational to auto innovation - great to see the inroads made into Fedex and Walmart, two huge and committed partners. 

Other auto stories of note:

• Sony Mobility: The EV drivetrain is helping all kinds of players surface as aspiring auto manufacturers. Sony Mobility launched Vision-S which has been developed on a foundation of safety, adaptability and entertainment. It has a total of 40 sensors are installed inside and outside of the vehicle to monitor safety. Nice. But some gamers I talk to rolled their eyes - “Playstation on wheels? I’ll pass.”
• I was excited to see two names which have some of my old pals in leadership come together - Stellantis and Amazon.The deal will put Amazon software in Stellantis vehicles and will also put Stellantis's electric vans into Amazon's delivery fleet. Ahoy there, Vishnu S and Mike T!

So, a quieter show floor clearly doesn't mean a quieter year for Auto. The focus on sustainable and renewable energy is what got me super-excited. More to come!