Chevrolet’s E-10 Concept Electrifies Hot Rodding World
Courtesy GM
Now any vehicle can become an electric vehicle.
General Motors (ticker: GM) on Wednesday announced a plan to offer electric-vehicle component sets. The sets will allow anyone, mainly businesses, to turn older, gasoline-powered vehicles into EVs.
Converting a car isn’t easy and will take, for the most part, trained professionals. Still, for some vehicle owners—ranging from hot rod enthusiasts to commercial fleet operators—converting old vehicles from gas to electric powertrains can offer fun or cost savings.
“GM has an established strategy, network of integrators and co-development agreements to apply an extensive array of components and solutions to a broad range of customers and use cases,” explained Travis Hester, GM vice president of electric vehicle growth operations, in a company news release. “As companies across many industries look to reduce their environmental impact, GM is uniquely positioned to serve as a leader not only through exciting new EVs across our brands, but through additional technology applications.”
GM believes the market for electrification components could be $20 billion by 2030.
This market isn’t the market for replacement parts going into EVs sold between now and 2030. Even though EV sales are growing there is still the worldwide fleet of gasoline-powered vehicles to consider. There will still be hundreds of millions of those vehicles on global roads by the end of the decade. This strategy addresses the gas vehicles.
The new components business is part of GM’s aggressive goal to double sales, off of a $140 billion base, by 2030. Retrofitting cars is a smaller part of that plans. Robotaxis, autonomous vehicle technology along with software-like sales and services are the bigger opportunity.
GM stock has risen about 32% year to date, a little better than the 23% and 15% comparable, respective returns of the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. Improving car demand coming out of the pandemic is one reason for improved stock performance. So is vehicle electrification.
Investors appear to be pleased with GM’s EV push. The company plans to spend roughly $35 billion between now and 2025 developing and manufacturing new EVs. Developing the EV kits for older cars cars is part of that $35 billion spend.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
