GM Moving To Its Own Microchips By 2025

In case you’ve been under a rock for the last year or so, auto industry news has been dominated by the ongoing global microchip shortage, which has affected production and product availability for every major automaker, including GM. Now, however, GM says it will have its own family of microchips locked in by 2025, a move that is expected to offset future chip-related production delays.
GM CEO Mary Barra in January
In a recent interview with Associated Press, GM CEO Mary Barra said that GM is moving toward three families of microchips that the automaker will buy and control directly. This is in contrast to the older model in which GM allows parts supply companies to acquire chips without GM’s prior knowledge.
GM’s new standardization model will streamline the critical components, eliminating the need for dozens of different chips per vehicle and allowing GM to buy in bulk to ensure that supplies are not interrupted.
“We’re also working with a select group of strategic companies to source these for the volumes,” Barra told AP. “We’ll have much better control and a stable supply.”
For now, however, Barra indicated that she expects chip shortages will likely continue into next year, possibly exacerbated by further COVID-19 outbreaks.

GM aims to be the market leader in electric vehicles by mid-decade, passing the current global EV sales leader, Tesla, in just two and a half years. GM has a long way to go yet, selling only 25,000 EVs in the U.S. last year, a fraction of the 352,000 EVs sold by Tesla.
According to one recent report, EVs have reached 5 percent of new vehicle sales in the U.S., a figure that’s considered the tipping point prior to widespread adoption. To help get there, GM will offer a range of more-affordable EV models, such as the upcoming Chevy Equinox EV and Chevy Blazer EV, as well as an all-electric iteration of the popular Chevy Silverado pickup. GM plans to launch 30 new EV models globally by 2025.

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