Although Tesla may be offering discounts on their electric vehicles, GM President Mark Reuss said the company is holding firm on its pricing.
"We're going to price right in the heart of the market, whatever vehicle we produce, whether it's a Hummer or an Equinox or whatever that is — they're going to be priced very competitively right in that market segment," Reuss said to Cheddar News. "I think if you look at our residual values and look at our pricing power because of the excellence of our products we can command that without going into some big discount war with people who weren't providing that value necessarily and really high price points. So you're not going to see us swing these prices wildly. You're going to see us compete right in what those segments are."
GM announced the 2024 Corvette E-Ray on Tuesday, the 70th anniversary of the first Corvette. The EV hybrid model, which will be out later this year, is supposed to be the fastest model yet, going from 0-60 mph in just 2.5 seconds. It has a 6.2L LT2 Small Block V-8 engine, capable of 495 horsepower, as well as an electric motor for an additional 160 horsepower. The pricing will start at $104,295 for the 1LZ coupe and $111,295 for the 1LZ convertible model.
"It is America's sports car," Reuss said. "We always took a lot of pride in engineering and manufacturing everything in-house on the car. The car has always been a spectacular performance, that's been very attainable for most of America, so the price point is important for us."
But to get more people to drive electric, the company will also invest in electric vehicle charging stations. The U.S. only had 6,000 fast-charging EV stations in June 2022, according to MIT Technology Review. To address the problem, GM is installing 40,000 high-output Level 2 stations near its dealerships, said Reuss, adding that about 90 percent of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a location. But there still needs to be an industry-wide effort to grow EV adoption. Change is happening, however.
"You're going to see these charge stations come online, even from some of the oil companies," Reuss said. "That's very progressive thinking. And of course we know the gas footprint and distribution is very, very large in the United States, which is a huge advantage as well."
While the E-Ray is a performance hybrid, GM is dedicating most of its resources to fully-electric vehicles. This includes investing in the Ultium platform, instead of creating hybrid vehicles with batteries. Reuss said it leads to more efficient vehicles, both in terms of charge times and range. The move is to position the company for the future they are predicting in two decades, not making minor tweaks, he said.
"At the end of the day, the greenhouse gas piece of it is what we're really trying to solve for the global warming piece of this and the sustainability piece of it," Reuss said. "So we said, we're not going to go that half step and put two powertrains or propulsion units in there for the customer. We're gonna go all the way and spend all of our [research and development] vertically integrating ourselves."
