General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mark Delaney: That’s helpful. Thank you. My second question was on Cruise and congratulations on the expansion into the new geographies last year. As you think about 2023 and I know you’re planning to expand, could you elaborate a bit more on your expansion targets for Cruise? And any potential changes in San Fran given the recent feedback from the local government there? Thank you.

Mary Barra: Kyle, do you want to take that one?

Kyle Vogt: Yes, sure. I can take that. So we will be expanding in 2023 to several new cities, but our current focus is on expanding our driverless service in San Francisco as well as in Phoenix and Austin following our initial driverless launches there. The initial deployments in Phoenix and Austin were modest, and we want to expand those very quickly. And of course, by doing that, expanding into these new cities using this repeatable playbook we’ve developed across safety and operations and some of the technical features, the barriers to launching in new cities can drive growth in existing markets are much smaller because of that upfront work we’ve put into all of those really difficult barriers to scale first. And I think your second question was on the SFMTA comments about our California Public Utilities Commission permit to expand.

And I just want to say there that our safety record is publicly reported and includes having driven millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment with zero life-threatening injuries or fatalities and we’re really proud of that record and also that the overwhelming majority of public comments on our permit application, including advocates from the disability community, small businesses and local community groups support expanding our fleet in San Francisco.

Mark Delaney: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next caller is Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley. You may go ahead sir.

Adam Jonas: Hi, thanks everyone. I just want to follow up on Mark’s question about the — about Ultium and the form factor. I appreciate that there’s room for flexibility. And you’ve mentioned in the past, Mary, that the Ultium system was kind of form factor and chemistry agnostic. But if you did change to cylindrical, the 46/80 form factor as reported in some of these sources what kind of thing would drive such a change? I’m not saying that you have made that decision, but it seems like it is potential — there’s potential to do that. What kind of — would it be driven by safety or cost and kind of how difficult would it be to make that flip?

Mary Barra: So first of all, I’m not going to comment on speculation, Adam. And by the way, hello, but we — we’re looking really at performance. I mean, one of the things when you look at with the way that you configure the packs within Ultium, the difference of the cells is a lot having to do with performance and how do we get the max benefit. Again, our team has been working and looking at all three cell form factors for a while. In fact, today, from a prismatic perspective, that’s what’s in the vehicles, the Ultium-based vehicles that we’re launching like the LYRIQ and the Buick in China. So we all along have been looking at all three form factors.

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