Mary Barra, chairman and CEO of General Motors, speaks before the General Motors shareholder’s meeting at the Renaissance Center in Detroit on June 12, 2018.WARREN, Michigan — In her 11th year as CEO of General Motors Co., Mary Barra’s latest test is to ensure that the Detroit automaker’s coming electric vehicles reach profitability by getting mainstream consumers to buy them in competitive global markets.
Barra, in an interview with The Detroit News last week, said the automaker now sees plug-in hybrids as part of the solution and expects them to arrive in North America in 2027. Answer: It’s hard for me to to know and say. All I know is because I take every competitor seriously … we’ve got to stay focused on being able to compete with anyone everywhere. And that’s what we’re focused on. We do have very strong brands. From a design perspective, getting a lot of very positive recognition on our designs, but then we’ve got to continue to really be relentless on taking cost out of our business because this is a very competitive business.
Q: If you had to it all over again, would you have made hybrids a part of your suite of technologies earlier, so you’d have them today?