GM Plans $5.5B In Cost Cuts To Help Finance New Mobility

“Some might find this massive change to be daunting, but we look at it and see the opportunity to be a disruptor”, CEO Mary Barra said.

GM employees can reserve a Volt using a car-sharing app and then select a destination.

The thinking behind GM’s plans might be as simple as to rather join a growing movement, which doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon, instead of letting other car-sharing programs beat it to the punch.

GM also announced the launching of two programs for vehicle sharing in New York and another city that has not yet been identified.

No company in or out of the auto industry has solved all the technical obstacles to autonomous cars, nor can they claim leadership, Reuss said.

Dan Ammann, the automaker’s president, has said the company can expand in emerging markets and also boost earnings from its GM Financial lending arm.

“In this space, it is important to get in and have experiments and learn what customer preferences are and how it changes driving behavior and what technology is most important”, Barra says, calling car-sharing another way to connect with customers outside of the traditional ownership model.

“We sold more 4G LTE connected vehicles in three days in June than the rest of the industry did in the first half of the year”, Phil Abram, GM’s executive director for connectivity, told Reuters.

The company also predicted a 31 percent reduction in battery cell costs for electric cars that could speed price reductions. It also has promised to roll out the Chevrolet Bolt, a $40,000 fully electric vehicle with a 200-mile range, in late 2016.

The No. 1 USA automaker said it is targeting an increase in earnings per share to between $5 and $5.50 per share before items, from the $4.50 per share that Wall Street analysts expect for this year.

The company said that in 2015 about 26 percent of its sales are coming from new vehicles or ones that had been redesigned over the past 18 months. This year, the company’s estimated market share is 11.3 percent and margins have grown to 6.8 percent.

Executives told an investor meeting that GM hoped to have a driverless Chevy Volt ready for next year’s event.

In a separate statement, GM reported a 12.5 percent year-over-year increase in its US vehicle sales for the month of September 2015. “We have a lot of confidence in our diesel technology”, she said.

The news was announced during GM investor conference at its Milford Proving Ground in Michigan today and was one of several alternative transportation projects revealed by the company.

Volkswagen has admitted installing software on 11 million cars with four-cylinder diesel engines worldwide that turns on pollution controls during government tests and turns them off on real roads.