This former Tesla executive could be the next CEO of General Motors

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On today’s agenda: GM CEO Mary Barra could choose a pioneer in electric vehicles and autonomy as her successor. The period of runaway growth for electric vehicle sales in the United States is over, and despite the bad vibes in the electric vehicle world, one solid-state battery startup plans to go public next year.

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25%: GM’s Mary Barra eyes successor

2026 Cadillac Escalade iQ

Photography: Patrick George

Sterling Anderson, the former Tesla executive who is leading General Motors’ forays into new technologies, is in the running to be the automaker’s next CEO.

Anderson joined GM in June as chief product officer after several years at Aurora Innovation, a self-driving trucking startup he co-founded in 2016. Bloomberg It was reported Thursday that Anderson is the leading candidate to succeed 63-year-old GM CEO Mary Barra and run the entire show.

That’s what Bloomberg find out:

The concept when he was hired, according to people familiar with the matter, was that if Anderson could fulfill Barra’s request for him to bring the latest software and self-driving technology to GM vehicles, he had a good chance of succeeding her.

like Bloomberg David Welsh says GM has tasked Anderson with injecting its cars with enhanced computing power and better software. It’s also on the hook to push its flawless drive efforts forward, develop subscription features that boost revenues and make GM’s electric vehicles profitable.

In other words, everything that will determine the winners and losers in the auto industry for years to come. So it makes sense that GM would strongly consider bringing in an outsider like Anderson to lead. He has deep experience in autonomous vehicles and managed the Model X and Autopilot projects at Tesla.

But transforming a giant, established automaker like General Motors won’t be easy. It has already encountered serious stumbling blocks on its way from conventional combustion vehicles to everything else. He – she Shut down her robotaxi Taksim a year ago after a serious accident. Since then, Waymo has been on a relentless expansion drive. Its software update game is still far behind those of new school players like Tesla and The Chevy Blazer EV had deep software issues At launch.

Additionally, GM has had trouble retaining Silicon Valley talent recently. The heads of artificial intelligence and software have departed recently. Anderson said Bloomberg He is well aware that there is a risk of rejection and that he is trying to make changes “surgically”.

“You can’t simply afford to break up a company and hope to put the pieces back together at a company like GM,” he said.

50%: The growth of electric cars will stop in 2025

Photography: Kevin Williams/InsideEVs

We all know this has been a volatile year for electric vehicle sales. People rushed to buy electric vehicles this summer and fall before the EV tax credit expired, leading to a record third quarter. Once that ended on September 30, the demand for and market share of electric vehicles in this country declined severely. Now we have a good idea of net EV sales in 2025, thanks Estimates from Cox Automotive Out this week.

After years of impressive growth, the company says U.S. electric vehicle sales are on track to decline slightly this year. Preliminary data indicates that 230,000 electric vehicles will be sold in the fourth quarter, a decrease of 46% from the third quarter and a decrease of 37% year-on-year. The share of electric vehicles in the automobile market decreased to 5.7% in this quarter.

For the full year, Cox expects a 2.1% decline in electric vehicle sales. Last year, Americans bought a record 1.3 million electric cars. Cox expects that this year to decline to about 1.275 million.

“Despite the record third-quarter performance, the sharp decline in the fourth quarter led to an overall year-over-year decline,” Stephanie Valdez Streety, director of industry insights at Cox, said on a conference call Wednesday. “The year was characterized by extreme volatility caused by changes in policy.”

It’s not a huge drop. But it’s a remarkable shift, especially when you look at the trajectory of electric vehicle sales over the past several years.

In 2020, about a quarter of a million new electric vehicles hit the road in the United States. As more and more electric options come online and awareness spreads, sales jumped to 488,000 in 2021, 810,000 in 2022, and 1.2 million in 2023, according to Cox. Last year, even as the electric vehicle industry faced speed bumps, full-year sales increased more than 7%.

We expect things to look tough for the foreseeable future, as automakers adjust their strategies and react to the new normal.

“We expect the market to continue to adjust, as consumers and merchants readjust to the new pricing reality without federal incentives,” Valdez Street said.

75%: Factorial to go public, with plans to launch solid-state batteries by 2027

Solid State Battery for Stellantis Agent

Photo by: Stellantis

Solid-state battery startup Factorial plans to go public via a SPAC next year, it announced Thursday. The deal values the Massachusetts-based startup at $1.1 billion and will give it an initial $100 million to further develop its next-generation battery technology.

said Factorial’s CEO, Siyu Huang New York Times The deal is an “inflection point in the company’s commercialization” and that it could help the company bring solid-state batteries to the automotive market by 2027.

In theory, solid-state batteries could solve almost all of the challenges of current lithium-ion technology by providing better safety, faster charging times, and greater energy density. But they have not yet graduated from the laboratory into the real world in any meaningful way. Mercedes-Benz has installed working cells In an EQS sedan prototype this year, Stellantis plans to do the same with some Dodge Charger Daytona concepts in 2026.

We’ll have to see if Factorial’s new investment can help get its technology over the line ahead of competitors.