Good morning. Alyson Shontell, Fortune’s Editor-in-Chief, writing from New York this morning. When I had the chance recently to interview Mary Barra for Fortune’s Titans podcast, the GM CEO made clear that the company has no plans to abandon EVs, even as consumer adoption has slowed, improvements to the charging infrastructure have taken longer than expected, and the Trump administration has pulled back on policies designed to accelerate the transition.
“I don’t think it’s shifted our mission,” she told me. “We still think EVs are the end game.”
That conviction matters, given that GM has spent years investing in electric vehicles, batteries, software, and charging. Going forward, Barra is applying a pragmatic framework: GM will keep selling EVs and hybrids; it will also keep selling the lucrative trucks and SUVs that many Americans still want. Investors by and large have applauded her embrace of the messy middle: The stock is trading near its all-time high and is up nearly 6% YTD.
The mantra that Barra returned to again and again in our interview was choice. She invoked the goal of the legendary GM CEO Alfred P. Sloan: to reach “a lot of pocketbooks.” It’s an idea that feels newly relevant in an inflationary era, as automakers try to serve customers with very different budgets, driving habits, and comfort levels with electrification.
