A Century of Scumbagery

“I don’t care what you have in writing; GM’s promises are worthless. We never trust them until we have the money”.

• Local GM Service Manager explaining why promised “warranty” commitments by both GM and the dealership were not going to be honored. (April 2023).

1921 (all events prior to 2022 are also described in the Wikipedia history of GM):

GM engineer Thomas Midgley discovered the anti-knock properties of tetraethyl lead, which GM patented because the competing alternative (ethanol) could not be patented and either product could be used to elevate the octane rating of gasoline. Atmospheric lead, from automobile exhaust, curtails brain development in children, leading to lowered IQs, poor attention spans, and behavioral problems among children in communities near roadways. According to Wikipedia’s account of this invention, GM executives were aware of at least some of the human health costs of tetraethyl lead at the time of its introduction into automobile fuel but chose not to divulge them. Midgley also discovered CFCs, the ozone destroying chemicals used as refrigerants. There is no suggestion that either GM or Midgley were cognizant of the ozone problem.

1938:

In a controversial action that is still being hotly debated, a consortium of automotive interests led by GM, but also including Firestone, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks purchased numerous US municipal transit systems that were struggling financially in the Depression. Among the most notorious was the purchase of Los Angeles’ system of trolleys, which were promptly shut down and replaced (to some degree) by GM buses. This action was eventually contested in court, and the jury convicted GM under the Sherman Antitrust Act of using its monopoly power to steer LA contracts to its bus division. An accompanying charge that the company used its economic heft to manipulate LA transportation in the direction of the private automobile resulted in an acquittal.

1939:

The German division of GM developed a technique to fabricate synthetic gasoline. The CEO of GM at the time, Alfred Sloan, was an outspoken admirer of Adolf Hitler. According to post-war testimony by Hitler deputy Albert Speer, the GM technology made it possible for Hitler to invade Poland. After the war the US government paid GM $32M for the damage the US bombers did to GM’s German armament factories.

1971:

Ford introduced the airbag; GM matched it in 1973. The safety benefits were so stark that regulators soon took an interest, but Ford, GM, and Chrysler fought successfully against airbag requirements for the next several decades. They argued that consumers did not want them. During the G. W. Bush administration (1998), long after airbags had become a must-have for most new car buyers, a federal requirement for their presence went into effect.

1996:

GM began leasing EV1s in California and Arizona. These first practical electric vehicles were wildly popular with the small number of leasors, notably California celebrities, but the regulations that drove GM to produce the EV1 were fiercely opposed by GM, which lobbied relentlessly to kill the “zero emission” requirement. In 2002, they succeeded, and immediately acted to retrieve all EV1s, an action highlighted in the documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” All operational EV1s were destroyed; even the museum versions that exist were stripped of their functional parts. It is not clear to me why GM was so savage in destroying the EV1s. The number of ICE (gas car) sales generated by depriving the owners of their beloved EVs does not seem commensurate with the bad publicity generated. Presumably they were trying to bend the arc of automotive history rather than just boost ICE sales by a few thousand units. In the postwar era, GM market dominance in the US automobile market rose to around 50%, but never exceeded that figure, as GM feared that anti-trust regulators would look askance at greater dominance. Subsequently, GM’s US market share has slipped steadily, and in 2023 stands at under 17%.

2022:

I got my own taste of GM beneficence, when my Volt developed a brake failure warning light (no braking problems were ever detected). The dealership explained that it was my fault, in that Volts were intended to be driven at least every other day and I had failed to do so. They contacted GM tech support to identify and fix the problem. In the meantime, the dealership turned off the warning light and told me to stop immediately and take a taxi home if the warning light returned. The warning light returned before I exited the dealer’s parking lot. Having encountered no braking problems (and needing the car for transportation) I continued to use the vehicle for several months. Eventually, I grew tired of the delay and asked the dealership for a loaner, thinking that might energize their promised repair. They complied and within about a week had the requisite parts installed, for which they charged me $3000 in parts and labor. This repair was warrantied for one year.

Side bar: They replaced two computer chips, which required 8 hours of labor (including dismantling the dash) to install. Why would any engineer bury a perishable computer chip that deeply?

Less than seven months later the problem returned, only this time the dealership took the vehicle from me and kept it for 3 months. The dealer assured me that the problem was warrantied and would be covered in full. At the end of three months and being informed of no progress, I asked for a loaner and the dealership explained that they could not possibly do that; only GM could authorize a loaner. They “helpfully” gave me the regional GM rep’s phone number and suggested I call him. He happily promised a loaner; I just needed to front the cash myself and have the invoice at the end of the rental sent to a specified e-address with the service case number appended. About a week later the car was fixed. I returned to the dealership with the written documentation from GM promising that the defective parts and requisite labor would be covered. The dealer’s Service Manager (who incidentally gave me the GM number and encouraged me to set the – subsequently dishonored – arrangement up with GM) responded with the quote that opens this story. Furthermore, he demanded $500 to release the vehicle which he had in his locked compound. Many exchanges later I was out nearly $3000 along with being deprived of my car for more than three months.

2023 (Dec):

The Biden Administration capitulated to a full-court press lobbying campaign by the legacy car makers to change the zero-emission sales requirement from pure electrics (BEVs) to BEVs plus plug-ins (PHEVs). As sales of these two categories are about equal in size, this effectively lowered the required threshold by 50%. Although the carmakers injected the idea that EV sales had languished, this is not true overall (New York Times 15Apr2024), year-on-year EV sales were up, but selected models and manufacturers had received poor reviews and some sales had declined in the most recent quarter. Consumer behavior was publicly blamed, as it was for previous retrenchments of GM’s electric transport business. Other EV brands were booming year-on-year (Kia up 100%, Hyundai up 75%, Rivian up 70%).

Immediately after winning the regulatory battle, GM killed off the Bolt, the most-successful non-Tesla EV in North America, despite an organized campaign to save the budget model. In a meeting with stockholders covered by EVinFocus.com (https://evinfocus.com/gm-bows-to-stockholders-with phev-stopgap/), GM CEO Mary Barra explained that GM would henceforth focus on PHEVs. GM is currently building a PHEV in China [GM North America stopped their very successful PHEV (Volt) shortly after the BEV Bolt was introduced], which Barra explained could be leveraged to cover EV sales vacated by the Bolt. “Barra was quick to admit that the new PHEVs will be ad hoc compliance vehicles, and GM’s reluctance to commit to a timeframe or production volumes for the PHEV suggests the new range could simply be a stopgap means of meeting regulatory requirements which can be discontinued as quickly as it is deployed” (EVinFocus). EVinFocus did not explain what the “gap” might be that the PHEV was intended to cover, but GM is presumably wanting something to bridge until the next administration, whichever administration that might be.

This leaves the just-introduced Chevy Blazer BEV on somewhat uncertain ground. The Blazer is not a PHEV but a BEV like the Bolt, though sportier and targeted at a much higher price point ($45K versus $18K).

Confusingly, a successor vehicle for the Bolt is also being teased (https://gmauthority.com/2024/01/chevy-bolt-ev-and-bolt-euv-production-is-officially-over/) for model year 2025 (which starts in a few months). The successor battery is to be Lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) rather than based on Ultium architecture (the lithium nickel-cobalt-manganese-aluminum (NCMA) formulation that GM has been touting for several years as their ticket to BEV dominance. Given that the factory (possibly in Mexico) in which the Bolt successor will be built has yet to be identified, it seems unlikely that the Bolt niche will be filled anytime soon.