Is the American Electric Car Already Dead?

Yahoo

17-03-2025

In 1970, the General Motors assembly plant in Lordstown was considered the world's most automated factory. The Ohio facility—outfitted with cutting-edge robots and electronic sensors—was to make a hotly anticipated new car. Designed by a team handpicked by GM president Ed Cole, the Chevrolet Vega would be a sexy, subcompact 'import fighter.' Featuring half as many parts as full-size models, it was meant to compete with zippier, more fuel-efficient foreign models from Japan and West Germany.
The car was a disaster. Although it sold decently, the Vega was racked with engineering issues. Chevrolet recalled half a million models for a defect that could cause the wheels to fall off. The fenders and lower doors rusted rapidly. Worst of all was the engine's tendency to overheat; if drivers didn't keep their coolant topped off, the engine could destroy itself. Assembly-line workers, meanwhile, chafed at the monotonous, rapid-fire production used to make the car. A plant that had produced 60 Impalas an hour was now expected to make 100 Vegas in the same time. New management declared more than 700 workers surplus and laid them off. Grievances and absenteeism among remaining members of the United Auto Workers Local 1112 accumulated. The union started a 'work to rule' campaign, slowing down production. Some at GM blamed the Vega's troubles on sabotage by disgruntled employees. Eventually, in March 1972, 7,500 workers walked out on strike. A failure at Lordstown, The New York Times wrote of the mood among some industry officials at the time, 'could mean a step toward ending production in the United States of vehicles designed to compete with imports.'
The story of the ill-fated Vega should offer an object lesson in bad planning for today's car industry. The rise of electric vehicles is the most transformative event in automobile manufacturing since Henry Ford invented the moving assembly line to churn out Model Ts. Legacy automakers have failed to adequately confront it. GM and Ford are again struggling to compete against foreign companies, having long prioritized hulking, expensive gas-guzzlers over investments in the cars of the future. Ford lost $5.1 billion on its EV business in 2024. GM faces mounting losses abroad. Both could lose billions if the full scope of the White House's proposed tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, and China, as well as on aluminum and steel, is implemented and ends up sticking. As companies blame workers, consumers, and competitors for their troubles, President Donald Trump and the GOP blame a nonexistent Green New Deal and China, whose firms now dominate EV supply chains. As with the Vega, however, executives in Detroit mainly have themselves to blame for failing to keep up with the times. The White House, meanwhile, is poised to encourage companies to double down on their shortsighted strategies—and leave autoworkers to deal with the fallout.This won't be the first time that the people who build cars shoulder their bosses' mistakes. Having weathered the Vega, the deindustrialization of the surrounding Mahoning Valley, and the great recession, GM 'reallocated' Lordstown Assembly in 2019. That March, after years of layoffs, the company shut down production of the Chevy Cruze and left some 1,700 people out of a job.
Among them was George Goranitis, a sunny native of Warren, Ohio, who worked several jobs at Lordstown during his 10-plus-year tenure. Once the factory closed, he transferred to another UAW shop in Tennessee. 'I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life,' he told me over FaceTime, tearing up. He moved back home less than a year later to be closer to his family. After that, he bounced from gig to gig, making considerably less than he had at Lordstown. For a while, he worked as a corrections officer at a local prison. Then, in 2022, Goranitis was hired to work at a new plant: Ultium Cells.
Situated next to the old Lordstown Assembly site, Ultium Cells was founded as a joint venture between General Motors and the Korean firm LG Energy Solution. Like Lordstown Assembly in its early days, Ultium Lordstown—which now has nearly 1,800 hourly employees—is exceptionally automated, meant to help GM take on foreign competition with Korean expertise and imported state-of-the-art technologies. It produces the lithium-ion batteries GM uses to power electric versions of flagship models such as the Chevy Equinox and Cadillac Lyriq.
In many ways, Ultium represents tomorrow's car industry as Joe Biden envisioned it. The Department of Energy awarded the factory a $2.5 billion loan in 2022 as part of its strategy to, in its words, create 'a clear demand signal for EV batteries as the auto industry races to build the vehicles of the future right here in America.' Like other funds provided by the Inflation Reduction Act—Biden's trademark legislative achievement—the money for carmakers was part of a broader push to spur U.S. companies to invest in domestic manufacturing and dominate the twenty-first century's most important growth industries. At GM's 'Factory Zero' in 2021—freshly retooled to produce EVs—Biden laid out that vision. 'For most of the twenty-first century, we led the world by a significant margin because we invested in our people,' Biden said in front of a pair of electric Hummers. 'But something went wrong along the way.… We risk losing our edge as a nation, and China and the rest of the world are catching up. Well, we're about to turn that around in a big, big way. We're going to be building again.'
That building doesn't look the way it did in the U.S. auto industry's heyday. Because much of Ultium's production is done with machines, the work is less physical than at conventional engine and assembly plants, and a world away from what Goranitis did at Lordstown Assembly. 'A lot of it's computer work,' he explained: 'watching your machinery, and making the adjustments you need to make.'
Constant monitoring is necessary to avoid the chemical exposure, fires, and explosions that are a risk of working with the harsh and in some cases toxic chemicals that go into making electric car batteries. Within a few weeks of Ultium's opening in August 2022, a machine malfunctioned and allowed a noxious chemical compound to be released into the air. Evacuated workers and contractors reported burning in their eyes and mouth, headaches, and dizziness. Air samples taken the next month found that part of the plant still showed trace levels of the same substance.
As in 1972, new production methods have been met with a new burst of organizing—much of it focused on health and safety issues. Weeks after being hired in 2022, Goranitis started hearing stories from co-workers about dangerous conditions and began efforts to bring in his old union, Local 1112. Eager for protections and higher wages, Ultium workers overwhelmingly voted to unionize (710–16) in 2022. They ratified their first contract with the company in June 2024. When Goranitis started at the factory, he made $16.50 an hour—roughly half of what he took home in his last year at Lordstown Assembly. It would have taken him seven years to reach $21 per hour. Because of their union contract, Ultium production workers now make $35 an hour after just four years, and can expect cost of living increases.
Carmakers have tried to resist the new organizing by invoking climate commitments. After years of failing to invest in electrification, companies have argued that meeting union demands would force them to abandon their newfound commitment to that cause, and lose out against nonunion competitors like Tesla and Toyota. 'We want to actually have a conversation about a sustainable future, not one that forces us to choose between going out of business and rewarding our workers,' Ford CEO Jim Farley told The New York Times. In 2023, as the UAW negotiated and struck over its muscular master agreement with the Big Three Detroit automakers (GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler owner Stellantis), one of the union's major goals was to prevent carmakers from using electrification as an excuse to undermine wages, benefits, and protections. When Factory Zero, which Biden visited, reopened to make EVs, jobs previously done by GM employees were reassigned to contractors working for a wholly owned GM subsidiary called GM Subsystems.
GM pursued a similar strategy at Ultium. Because of the joint-venture structure, Ultium had initially argued that UAW members there should be covered by a stand-alone contract rather than the master agreement. Goranitis, now the president of Local 1112, begged to differ. 'We're seeing them use all the GM language and the GM trainings like the ones we had'—at Lordstown—'and we're like—excuse my language—no, bullshit,' he said. 'We are General Motors. You guys don't want to call us General Motors because you don't want to pay us the money we'd be making at GM.' GM agreed to include both Ultium and GM Subsystems workers in the master agreement ratified last June.
'We've been told for months that the EV future must be a race to the bottom,' UAW International president Shawn Fain said after the deal was struck. 'And now we've called their bluff.'If there's one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it's the importance of the U.S. auto sector—and votes in Michigan and Ohio. Joe Biden became the first sitting president to walk a picket line when he showed up to support UAW members on strike at a GM auto parts plant near Detroit in 2023. Automakers, Biden told the crowd via bullhorn, are 'doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well, too.' Vice President JD Vance, then an Ohio senator, visited strikers in Toledo. In an op-ed about the strike in the Toledo Blade, Vance argued that the UAW should use the strike as an 'opportunity' to 'safeguard their future against an existential threat: President Biden's forced transition to electric vehicles.'
For Democrats, the Big Three and its workforce were to lead the way to a green manufacturing renaissance. Republicans resisted even gradual attempts to expand the market for electric vehicles, hoping out-of-work autoworkers could be a cudgel against those plans and Democrats' climate policies. In Trump's inaugural address, the president accordingly pledged to 'revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers.'
Unsurprisingly, his formula gets things more or less backward. The auto industry—and the work that powers it—aren't what they used to be. EVs and globalized supply chains can't be wished away. Amid electrification and China's rise as an automaking behemoth, U.S. automakers, coddled by decades of preferential tariffs and regulatory carve-outs, are today retreating even further from global markets. If the industry is to resemble the ever-flowing wellspring of middle-class prosperity politicians love to imagine it as, it can't abandon EVs. And it will have a lot to learn, and buy, from its competitors. The alternative is a slow, painful decline that will leave the industry and its workers worse off.
But Detroit has a lot of catching up to do. Owing to well over a decade of state-driven subsidies and regulatory incentives, trade protections, and intense, managed competition among firms, Chinese companies now produce around 80 percent of the world's EV battery cells; just one firm, CATL, commands nearly 37 percent of the market. China also dominates globe-spanning supply chains for the minerals needed to produce them. According to the International Energy Agency, Chinese firms process more than half the world's lithium, two-thirds of its cobalt, and more than 70 percent of its graphite.
Needless to say, Biden and Trump took different approaches to dealing with this situation. The Biden administration made automakers a star player of an industrial strategy designed to stem China's rise and put the United States back on top. To accomplish that, the White House relied primarily on three levers: carrots (subsidies), walls (tariffs), and sticks (regulations). Biden's approach represented a break from traditional economic orthodoxy, which assumed that markets would 'always allocate capital productively and efficiently,' as national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in 2023. As it encouraged allies to erect their own trade barriers against China, the administration rolled out a menu of economic interventions aimed at helping U.S. firms beat Chinese competitors on EVs, solar, semiconductors, and more. Because China doesn't operate on purely 'market-based terms,' former National Economic Council head Brian Deese told podcaster Ezra Klein in 2021, the United States can't either.
The centerpiece of Bidenomics was the Inflation Reduction Act. That massive spending package's nearly $400 billion worth of producer- and consumer-side subsidies for clean energy include a $7,500 rebate for individuals and businesses to purchase new electric vehicles; funds for EV charging infrastructure, supplemented by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act; and generous incentives for auto manufacturers to convert and expand facilities for the production of EVs, batteries, and their components.
Although IRA funds were meant to be disbursed over a decade, it's not clear how many of those pots will still be available in four years—or one. Soon after taking office, Trump signed an executive order pausing all federal disbursements under the IRA and the IIJA. Actually ending these programs requires permission from Congress, but, as of this writing, 'special government employee' and Tesla CEO Elon Musk was trying to override Congress's power of the purse and end whatever spending the White House opposes.
Restricting future loans to automakers could deal a blow to anyone trying to break into the EV and EV battery market—Musk's competitors, in other words. Unlike traditional assembly plants—which can make gas-powered, electric, and hybrid cars interchangeably, allowing them to respond to fluctuating demand—nascent battery manufacturing relies on federal funds and steady demand for EVs. Given how reluctant the Big Three have historically been to go electric, rolling back incentives could encourage them to double down on business as usual and scale back newer, more subsidy-dependent ventures like battery production. Asked about the prospect of EV subsidies ending, Goranitis said it was 'one of the biggest worries for us.'
Goranitis has reason to be afraid. While experts expect tax credits for manufacturers to be preserved, the White House is targeting funds meant to increase demand for EVs and—by extension—companies' interest in making them. Ending consumer-side subsidies for EVs is a high priority for the administration, and could dent EV sales by up to 27 percent. In early February, the Federal Highway Administration ordered states to suspend the $5 billion, IIJA-funded National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program to build sorely needed EV chargers, pending review.
'The question is about long-term demand,' said Jonas Nahm, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who served on the White House-based Council of Economic Advisers during the Biden administration. 'By calling into question the entire energy transition, you're also making investment harder for companies to justify if these products have an uncertain future.'
The White House's anti-regulatory push could remove other incentives for automakers to go electric. The so-called EV mandate in the administration's crosshairs doesn't force manufacturers to make a certain number of EVs or stop them from making gas-powered cars. It's targeting pollution and fuel economy standards that increase gas mileage. Trump wants to claw back waivers granted by the Environmental Protection Agency late last year that allow California to phase out gas-powered cars by 2035, an approach 11 other blue states have either adopted or are planning to adopt. The Department of Transportation is reviewing federal fuel economy standards. Slashing such rules was an onerous task for the last Trump administration, but his team's disregard for those processes could mean they'll make quicker work of it this time.
Although worlds apart, neither party's approach to the U.S. auto sector has been willing to confront its present reality. The Big Three are not poised to dominate global EV supply chains in the lofty terms the Biden administration envisioned; they would have needed to enter that race over a decade ago. Neither will Trump's war on EVs return the country to some imagined era of postwar imperial might when men were men, or whatever other fantasy Trump has in mind. As more people drive worldwide, more of their cars will be EVs. A relatively small proportion of those will be Made in America. How they're made today, moreover, bears little resemblance to politicians' nostalgic fantasies.Like the AA batteries rolling around in your junk drawer, the batteries that power EVs have two electrodes: a positively charged cathode and a negatively charged anode. Metals such as aluminum or copper provide their basic structure. Those are rolled out into thin sheets and coated in separate tarlike black mixtures known as slurry, typically containing powdered metals mixed into a liquid solvent. Coated sheets are placed in an oven to dry, then cut into sheets that are stacked together and placed in a long, thin casing. That casing gets injected with a conductive lithium-ion electrolyte mixture and sealed into a 'cell.' Cells receive an initial electrical charge. This can produce gases—typically carbon dioxide and some carbon monoxide—that are vented off before the cells are sealed shut permanently and packaged into battery modules. Those are shipped out to assembly plants, where they'll be combined into the battery packs that sit on the car's underbody.
Each of these stages presents unique risks. The EPA, for instance, has found that a solvent commonly used in cathode production, N-Methylpyrrolidone, 'presents an unreasonable risk of injury.' Long-term exposure has been linked to reduced fertility, as well as liver, kidney, and nervous and immune system damage. Lithium-ion electrolyte mixtures can eat through skin and boots. The precise compositions of the chemical mixtures that companies use are tightly controlled trade secrets, though. It can be difficult for employees to access information about the materials they're tasked with handling. And even for substances known to be harmful, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration often doesn't have specific rules for limiting employees' exposure.
During orientation, battery plant workers are given a general overview of the sorts of hazards they face and the types of protection they need, but several employees I spoke with said they or their co-workers hadn't been properly prepared for the sorts of noxious chemicals they'd be handling and weren't provided with appropriate personal protective equipment.
Emily Drueke works in quality control at BlueOval SK, or BOSK, a joint venture between Ford and the Korean firm SK On, located just outside of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. The company secured a $9.2 billion loan from the Department of Energy in 2023 for that site and two other joint-venture battery plants to be built in Kentucky and Tennessee, estimated to eventually employ 7,500 people.
Although the facility where Drueke works isn't fully operational yet, her team tests chemicals and other materials as they arrive. 'We were doing a test, and someone got a whiff of chemicals. Thankfully, they warned me, and I knew what to do, so I got lucky,' she recounted. Since November, Drueke and her team have been requesting powered respirators. A few of them had been fitted for respirators as of publication, but none had been distributed. 'I'd much rather have too much [personal protective equipment] than not enough.' In January, Drueke joined a supermajority of her co-workers in filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board for a vote to form a union with the UAW. Having previously worked in a unionized GE plant nearby, she described the difference between the two workplaces as 'nightmarishly huge.' Over email, a spokesperson for BOSK denied workers' claims about inadequate PPE provision, calling them 'not only false but malicious.'
In order to qualify for IRA-funded tax credits, companies have to ensure that an escalating percentage of their battery components—including production machinery—are sourced domestically or from countries with which the United States shares a free-trade agreement. Korean firms, therefore—LG Energy Solution for Ultium, SK On for BOSK—have been top choices for U.S. automakers that lack the expertise to build and staff those facilities in-house. Most of the machinery that BOSK and Ultium workers operate is made by those companies, and Korean staff have come to both facilities to help train workers on how to use it and run the plant.
There have been bumps along the way. Representatives from the Korean side of these joint ventures come to the States on short-term, usually 90-day visas. While many speak at least some English, workers and managers typically don't speak any Korean. There are interpreters, of course, but generally not enough to handle detailed translation across an entire facility for every shift. Asked about translation issues, the BOSK spokesperson said that the company has 'a team of interpreters on staff' and utilizes 'multiple language translations.'
Building electric vehicle batteries doesn't need to be dangerous. It's common for trade and industrial unions, including those in the auto sector, to help develop health and safety protocols for bosses and members alike to follow. Ultium workers started filing complaints with OSHA before they had a union contract. The pressure of having federal inspectors around helped them secure health and safety protections while negotiations were ongoing, and more protections through the contract. BOSK workers are eager for similarly speedy improvements.
But the progress the UAW has made in organizing battery plant and EV workers—so instrumental in making Ultium safer—could be harder to come by over the next four years. One of Trump's first acts in office was to abruptly fire two top officials at the National Labor Relations Board, Jennifer Abruzzo and Gwynne Wilcox. The unprecedented firings left the board temporarily kneecapped, and workers with little recourse against employees that violate federal labor law. Bosses will find it easier to interfere in any union elections that do eventually proceed—including those at BOSK—thanks to a February memo from NLRB acting counsel William Cowen, overturning Biden-era protections.
The administration hasn't outlined many clear plans for OSHA specifically, but, like the rest of the federal government, the department is subject to Musk's personnel purge. That will likely mean fewer compliance, safety, and health officers, and even slower progress establishing exposure limits and other rules to govern the chemicals used to produce EV batteries. Congressional Republicans have floated a bill to disband OSHA altogether.
Attacking the laws and institutions that can make jobs in the country's fledgling EV sector safer means fewer of them will be. That provides an opportunity for the right to paint EV manufacturing as inherently dangerous and poorly paid compared to traditional auto factories, which are relatively safe today thanks to decades of battles to make them that way. The protocols that keep autoworkers from having their hands cut off and their lungs coated in silica dust were hard-won. Strikes and organizing drives kept bosses from treating workers as expendable. Policy fights defended their right to organize against reactionary business interests, and helped establish federal standards to protect their bodies from harmful chemicals. That new battery plants are comparatively chaotic makes a certain amount of sense: The production happening at Ultium and BOSK is new to the U.S. auto sector. If battery factories are made into safe, well-paid shops, tomorrow's workers will have union organizers to thank, too. If those jobs remain dangerous and poorly paid, it will be because Republicans and automakers prevented their efforts.Electric vehicle production and components pose novel risks to workers that unions can protect against. The expansive, globalized supply chains that dominate the industry pose threats to legacy automakers that are much harder to avoid. Reliant on critical minerals mined in Chile's Atacama Desert and parts made in Mexico or Canada, today's cars are inevitably global products.
By far the most important Trump 2.0 change for automakers, then, will be one he has virtually unilateral control over: tariffs. They've been used with increasing frequency since Trump's first term. Biden maintained and in some cases expanded tariffs on China that he initiated in 2018. He placed a 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and raised tariffs on lithium-ion batteries to 25 percent. On the campaign trail, Trump proposed a 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports; the White House has now imposed a 20 percent tariff. Automakers received a late-breaking one-month exemption from Trump's proposed 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, which were intended to force those countries to stem migration and the flow of fentanyl into the United States. As of publication, overall tariffs on both countries have been paused and scaled back for many other goods from those countries, with little certainty as to which levies might go into effect when.
Legacy U.S. automakers—which generate most of their profits in North America and have organized production around the expectation of free trade within its borders—have a lot to lose if the White House does eventually impose tariffs on cars and parts from Canada and Mexico. Both countries are critically important to auto industry supply chains. Roughly a quarter of all cars sold in the United States come directly from either Mexico or Canada. Ninety percent of Mexican and Canadian auto exports—including finished cars, engines, transmissions, and parts—are shipped here.
General Motors is Mexico's biggest car manufacturer. The company produces 22 percent of its North American fleet there and 18 percent in Canada. Stellantis and Ford make 23 and 15 percent of their vehicles in Mexico, respectively. Wells Fargo estimates that 25 percent tariffs on those countries could cost the Big Three $56 billion a year. Car costs for consumers could increase by an average of $3,000 as manufacturers pay levies on not only finished vehicles but car components that are difficult to substitute and can cross the U.S. border as many as eight times before final assembly. Even cars ostensibly made for and in the United States wouldn't be spared. Less than 50 percent of Ford's bestselling F-150, for instance—assembled in Michigan and Missouri—is made in the United States or Canada. On a February earnings call, CEO Farley warned that 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada could wipe out 'billions of dollars of industry profits' and threaten 'the entire value system in our industry.' Conversely, he appeared to argue for expanding tariffs to include imports from South Korea, Japan, and other countries. 'We can't just cherry-pick one place or the other, because this is a bonanza for our import competitors,' he said.
Generally supportive of tariffs, the UAW wrote in a statement that it would be 'willing to support the Trump Administration's use of tariffs to stop plant closures and curb the power of corporations that pit US workers against workers in other countries.' The UAW later issued a more enthusiastic endorsement of Trump's tariffs, saying it was 'glad to see an American president take aggressive action on ending the free trade disaster.' However, the union added, Trump's anti-worker policy at home 'leaves American workers facing worsening wages and working conditions.'
Coupled with funds from the IRA and tightened fuel efficiency rules, the Biden White House's protectionist measures were ostensibly designed to buy time for manufacturers to catch up to international competitors. Insofar as the incoming Trump administration has an industrial strategy, it seems more interested in rewarding donors and persecuting grudges than in Making American Manufacturing Great Again. Even if the most apocalyptic visions of what new tariffs portend for the Big Three are overblown, Trump's simultaneous stripping away of incentives to invest in electrification could mean that 'for strategic purposes,' Nahm said, 'that path is no longer wise.'Detroit ceded the market for smaller, typically more fuel-efficient models to foreign producers in response to half a century's worth of regulatory loopholes, protectionist trade policy, and federal subsidies. One of the most important developments came in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson retaliated against a European tariff on chicken imports by imposing a 25 percent tariff on imported light trucks, including many SUVs. The 'chicken tax,' which exists to this day, discourages foreign automakers from bringing larger vehicles into the country. Another important loophole arrived with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act in 1975. Because trucks and SUVs were still used mostly for professional rather than recreational purposes at the time, the law specified that they should be subject to separate, often less stringent regulatory standards. That distinction has been preserved and strengthened in recent years, even as consumers' habits have changed. By 2021, light trucks accounted for 63 percent of sales, and passenger vehicles for only 37 percent.
The combination of incentives available for SUVs and trucks was irresistible to U.S. automakers: Larger cars are subject to looser pollution and fuel economy regulations, face less competition from abroad, and promise profit margins that are 10 to 20 percent greater than conventional vehicles. Bit by bit, Nahm said, U.S. automakers pulled out of international markets and relied more and more on SUVs and trucks. Buoyed by strong domestic sales of those models, the Big Three shifted their lineups to suit customers in their own backyard.
As the United States leaned into making big cars for its domestic market, China became a global automaking behemoth. In 2000, China made just 1 percent of the world's cars. The country now produces 39 percent of light-duty vehicles globally, and two-thirds of the world's EVs. Over that same period, America's share of global auto production has dropped from 15 to just 3 percent.
In 2000, China made just 1 percent of the world's cars. The country now produces 39 percent of light-duty vehicles globally, and two-thirds of the world's EVs. Over that same period, America's share of global auto production has dropped from 15 to just 3 percent.
The consequences of that retreat and failure to invest in the future have started to settle in for Detroit executives. Farley, Ford's CEO, returned from a recent trip to China warning that BYD and other homegrown firms pose an 'existential threat.'
He's got reason to worry—not just about the price and quality of EVs coming out of China, but the fact that consumers there are increasingly choosing Chinese vehicles over imports. China has been the world's biggest buyer of cars since 2009; Chinese consumers now purchase nearly as many cars as their counterparts in the United States and Europe combined. As high-quality domestic models proliferate in China, foreign automakers that once made fortunes there—including GM—are struggling to compete. In the course of just two years, their share of the Chinese market dipped from 53 to 33 percent. GM announced in December that it would eat $5 billion to write down investments there, having lost $347 million in the country during the first three quarters of 2024.
As CEO Mary Barra put it on a recent earnings call, 'the amount of companies losing money' in China 'cannot continue indefinitely. And really, when you get into the type of pricing war that's going on now, it's really a race to the bottom.'
'There is real and growing demand outside of the United States and Europe for EVs and hybrids, but GM and Ford are stepping away from that,' said sociologist Kyle Chan. Both are enjoying tidy profits from predominantly gas-powered fleets of trucks and SUVs in the United States, where demand for EVs is growing but likely to remain modest. If the White House scraps EV incentives, ditches fuel efficiency rules, and/or makes it virtually impossible to buy from Chinese battery and critical minerals producers, the Big Three could have greater reason to hold fast to their more provincial tendencies. 'Even if it's a bit short-term in terms of strategy, the temptation is very strong to just focus on your main profit center,' Chan added. 'While policies like the IRA and EPA regulations may evolve,' an Ultium spokesperson said over email, the company remains 'committed to the transition to electric vehicles and will continue to produce high-quality battery cells based on demand.' BOSK said it would 'monitor changes made by the current administration and adapt as needed.'Over the coming four years, autoworkers will once again be on the receiving end of whatever strategic shifts their bosses make to accommodate Trump. Ford and GM scaled back their electrification pledges prior to Trump's election, and are indisputably rethinking their approach in general. Ford has put plans for a second BOSK production facility on hold 'indefinitely.' GM announced last fall that it would discontinue the Ultium brand name and integrate cheaper, less resource-intensive lithium iron phosphate batteries, already widely used by Tesla and BYD. In December, it sold its stake in one of the three Ultium facilities it co-owned with LG Energy Solution in Michigan. Having previously projected battery electric vehicles to account for 40 percent of cars sold in the United States by 2030, in late 2024 S&P Global Mobility revised that projection down to 30 percent. 'With less regulatory pressure,' analysts predicted, 'automakers may slow their EV transitions, potentially stalling the momentum that had built up in the industry.'
As the changes are confronted, it's impossible not to think of past contractions. Goranitis, the UAW Local 1112 president, pointed to what happened to the Youngstown area after Lordstown Assembly was shuttered—another in a long line of plant closures across industries. 'You drive around here, it's like an abandoned city,' he told me. 'Just a bunch of abandoned mills and buildings. It's ugly and it's sad.'
Still, there may be some hope yet for electric vehicles in the United States. Given the amount the Big Three have already invested in their EV business, they're unlikely to abandon it entirely. The UAW also committed Ford, GM, and Stellantis to making billions of dollars' worth of EV-related investments as part of their 2023 master agreement. Major U.S. automakers have united to support expanding EV charging infrastructure.
To help preserve EV incentives and the future of jobs at Ultium, Goranitis said he's eager to appeal to Republican politicians and, especially, fellow Ohio native JD Vance. Vance joined a meeting with Goranitis and other UAW members in Washington, D.C., while he was still in the Senate—and fiercely criticized federal support for electric vehicles on the campaign trail. 'I'm hoping he has some type of sympathy,' Goranitis told me.