GM May Simply Be Too Late to Win the Electric Age

Like Kodak and Nokia, the legacy automaker may be overtaken by the future

GM CEO Mary Barra at an event where she announced a $300 million investment in the GM Orion assembly plant for electric and self-driving vehicles on March 22, 2019, in Lake Orion, Michigan. Photo: Bill Pugliano/Stringer/Getty Images

Is GM in danger, the same as Kodak was before it went down the tubes in the ‘oughts? The same as Nokia before it, too, went from having the “it” product to the dustbin, as easy as you can spell iPhone?

Over the last couple of weeks, senior GM executives have been on a PR blitz to assert that the answer is not only no but hell no. In an appearance on the Freakonomics podcast, CEO Mary Barra admitted that all the world’s auto incumbents won’t “necessarily successfully make the transition” to the apparent new age of electric vehicles. But she strongly suggested that GM would not be one of the fatalities. As did her vice president for EVs, Ken Morris, who said this week on Axios’ Re:Cap podcast that GM is not only moving aggressively into the new world but is in the process of flipping over its entire fleet to electric. “An all-electric company is the ultimate goal,” Morris said.

Hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to knowing which new companies will become juggernauts and which current ones will suffer a forlorn demise. But in GM’s defense, one can fairly argue that, unlike Kodak, Nokia, and other ignominious has-beens, it has been neither blind nor behind the curve. In 2012, before anyone…