General Motors Co (GM) is to leave Australia, New Zealand and Thailand by the end of this year as it exits poor-performing markets and focuses on new technologies, such as self-driving and electric vehicles.
The largest US automaker is to take US$1.1 billion in charges mostly in the first quarter, of which US$300 million is cash, to cover the costs of leaving those markets, GM said in a statement.
The restructuring marks the end of the 164-year-old Holden brand in Australia, while in Thailand, GM is withdrawing the Chevrolet badge and selling its Rayong plant to China’s Great Wall Motor Co (長城汽車).
Chief executive officer Mary Barra is shrinking GM to the point where it gets almost all of its profits from the Americas and China. She is reducing the company’s global presence and betting on technology rather than pouring money into struggling markets.
“I’ve often said that we will do the right thing, even when it’s hard, and this is one of those times,” Barra said in the statement. “We have the right strategies to drive robust returns and prioritizing global investments that will drive growth in the future of mobility.”
The downsizing is part of a long-running strategy at GM since the Detroit-based company emerged from bankruptcy in 2009.
The company pulled the Chevrolet brand from Europe in 2015, left Russia the same year and sold its German Opel unit and British Vauxhaul brand to France’s Peugeot SA in 2017.
The company is to wind down sales, design and engineering operations in Australia and New Zealand and retire the Holden brand by next year.
GM president Mark Reuss ran Holden in 2008 and 2009, but since then its market share has fallen to 4.1 percent from almost 13 percent.
The reorganization kills off an Australian icon. Holden produced the country’s first wholly locally made vehicle in 1948. By the end of the century, the Commodore sedan was the country’s best-selling car and remained so until 2011.
However, the brand’s future in Australia has been in doubt since GM closed its Holden factory in the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth in 2017.
The company has been struggling in Australia for several years with low sales volumes and high manufacturing costs.
As GM downsizes overseas, the company is pouring money into electric vehicles in a bid to catch Tesla Inc.
GM has already spent several billions of US dollars to develop self-driving vehicles with Cruise LLC, which it bought in 2016.
With Australia and New Zealand being chopped from GM’s global network of markets, the company’s primary focus other than the US is to be China, Mexico and South America.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
OPTION: Uber said it could provide higher pay for batch trips, if incentives for batching is not removed entirely, as the latter would force it to pass on the costs to consumers Uber Technologies Inc yesterday warned that proposed restrictions on batching orders and minimum wages could prompt a NT$20 delivery fee increase in Taiwan, as lower efficiency would drive up costs. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made the remarks yesterday during his visit to Taiwan. He is on a multileg trip to the region, which includes stops in South Korea and Japan. His visit coincided the release last month of the Ministry of Labor’s draft bill on the delivery sector, which aims to safeguard delivery workers’ rights and improve their welfare. The ministry set the minimum pay for local food delivery drivers at
RSS