Sidebar: GM Says They’re Serious About Electrification? Prove It.
One notable sight from the General Motors display at the Grand Prix last weekend was the complete lack of electric vehicles that the company is supposedly so interested in promoting. Triple zero bottom line, electrification, GM and the cities of to-morrow, yadda yadda yadda. There was but a mention of the all-electric Cadillac Lyriq, which is going to cost more than my annual takehome. As I’ve said many a time, we can’t decarbonize the transportation sector by way of electric SUVs. It isn’t a thing. But why, when GM is ostensibly so dead set on the future of the electrified paradigm, would they not so much as display a single electric car at the premier car event of the year?
Like, what gives, people? For real? Is this merely a product of Michigan Hometown Gal Mary Barra’s nostalgic affinity for the internal combustion engine-powered joy of the open road? Or racetrack, rather? Like, what, Mary, you’re really gonna buy into that whole Michigan Republican mantra of the emasculated electric car? Or that you can’t drive that little plastic toy car out into the provinces to your rural ranch house, or whatever, because it doesn’t have enough range?
Is this because GM knows their audience? And knows that the people who would love to spend an afternoon inhaling the fumes of a bunch of 6mpg cars (frankly impressive given how massive the engines are) drive around in a circle are, well, the non-intersecting circle of “race fans” in a Venn Diagram whose other circle comprises “people who contribute monthly to the Sierra Club”?
I am, well, quite unsurprised. I was pleasantly surprised to see a Bolt on display at the Tigers game. I guess we have to start somewhere.
