Exclusive From The Electric: Inside GM’s Do-Over

Last November, Ed Duby took over battery production at General Motors. He found an effort in crisis: The company was on track to sell fewer than a quarter of the 400,000 electric vehicles it had predicted for 2023, and the numbers were unlikely to improve anytime soon. 

The problem wasn’t consumer demand. Rather, GM had fumbled production of the battery on which it had bet its EV future—the Ultium. In the third quarter of 2023, GM’s five Ultium assembly plants had produced enough working batteries for just 1,204 EVs.