Why GM's CEO Mary Barra is Still Bullish on Electric Vehicles

Mary Barra (0:02)

Problems don't get smaller. When's the best time to solve a problem? The minute you know you have one.

Alyson Shontell (0:07)

Mary Barra is General Motors.

She began working on a GM factory floor at age 18, and 46 years later, she's now running the company. Mary rose to CEO during one of the biggest safety crises in General Motors history. Since then, Mary has transformed the company into one that generates over $180 billion in annual revenue. GM currently ranks number 23 on the Fortune 500 But today, she faces a whole new set of challenges, fierce competition from China, shifting EV policy, and the rise of artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. After more than four decades at GM, Mary told us how she intends to steer the company into the next century. I sit down with her today for an hour to talk through all that and more for this episode of Fortune 500 Titans and Disruptors of Industry.

We'll be back after a message from our sponsors.

SPEAKER_3 (0:58)

Fortune spoke with Deloitte US CEO Jason Garzades on building a culture of speed and agility to drive innovation in large organizations.

Jason Garzades (1:08)

There's a natural tendency for large organizations to become slow and deliberate.

But in this environment, given the pace of technology and other competitive dynamics, there's also a need to increase agility, increase speed.

And so there's a way through evaluating cultural drivers of the speed of decision making, the speed of communications, accountability for decision making, that large organizations can be agile. It doesn't have to be an either or. An entrepreneurial culture within a large organization really means that the speed of decision making is a priority, that the decision making process, accountability, clarity of decision rights, a culture of making speed a priority can thrive. It's a CEO's job, a leader's job to make sure that individual units or divisions or groups or teams within a large organization feel that degree of empowerment and support and expectation that the speed of decision making is a priority. It's something that winning larger enterprises are intentional about.

Alyson Shontell (2:18)

Mary Barra, it is such a pleasure to be with you today. In this gorgeous Cadillac facility you have, I'm surrounded by stunning cars that I want to buy. I love to hear that.

Mary Barra (2:27)

I love to hear that.

Alyson Shontell (2:28)

GM is 100 years plus old, $185 billion annualized revenue company. You are number 23 on the Fortune 500, number 39 globally of all the companies in the world. You're 39th in revenue generation. It's such a pleasure to have you.

Mary Barra (2:44)

Well, it's great to be here and it's so nice to spend some time with you. I'm so proud of everything that General Motors has accomplished.

Alyson Shontell (2:50)

You should be and a lot under your tenure. I want to cover a lot of ground, but first, I just want to start with 2026 The last two quarters have really had a strong financial performance. In a year where that was not a given, you were combating tariff changes, an EV rollback to schedule, a lot going on.

What is behind the resilience that we're seeing in GM this year?

Mary Barra (3:13)

Well, I think first of all, I have to give credit to the General Motors team.

The agility is their superpower now, and also we have a really strong product portfolio. I'm so pleased and you can see some of them around us right now.

When you have a really strong product portfolio, it speaks to the customer and they're choosing us. We have much lower than industry incentives. We're either usually one or two and we're growing share.

I think it really speaks to the strength of the underlying product that we have, and that really fuels everything. Then I think there's been predictions for the last several years, this is peak, this is peak. I still think there's more room we're seeing it this year, and our customer for new vehicles has been more resilient than I think people thought. I look at the metrics every couple of weeks and we still see strength in the market from a vehicle perspective.

Alyson Shontell (4:03)

It seems like customer demand, which was predicted to be waning, really hasn't felt that in the US and that seems like Americans still love their gas guzzling trucks and SUVs, of which you make them quite well.

Mary Barra (4:14)

Well, I do think one of the things that we have with our portfolio is getting the customer choice, whether they want a full size truck or SUVs or even a small under $30,000 crossover vehicle, and then we still have over a dozen EVs. We really give the customer a lot of choice and reach a lot of pocketbooks, as Alfred Sloan would say, and I think that's one of the strength because wherever the customer is, we have a vehicle and again, beautifully styled with the latest technology and safety features.