General Motors (GM) on Wednesday boosted its spending on electric and autonomous vehicles, pulled ahead plans for two U.S. battery plants, Reuters reported.
The No. 1 U.S. automaker said it will spend $35 billion through 2025 on EVs, an increase of 75% from March 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the industry.
“EV adoption is increasing and reaching an inflection point,” GM Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson told reporters on a conference call. “We want to be ready to be able to produce the capacity that we need to meet demand over time.”
GM previously said it would introduce 30 new EVs globally by 2025, and on Wednesday it said that number will now rise with the higher spending, including additional electric commercial trucks. It also said additional U.S. plant capacity would be used to build electric SUVs. Specifics of the new vehicle numbers and SUV plants involved were not detailed.
GM said it will build two additional U.S. battery plants by mid-decade, joining plants in northeast Ohio and Spring Hill, Tennessee. GM said details on where those plants will be built will be announced later, but those plants will account for more than half of the latest $8 billion increase in spending.
This marks the second time the Detroit carmaker has increased its EV budget since outlining its goals early last year. In November, the budget increased to $27 billion from $20 billion.
GM’s announcement comes less than a month after rival Ford Motor upped its EV spending by more than a third to over $30 billion by 2030.
In January, GM set a goal to sell all its new cars, SUVs and light pickup trucks with zero tailpipe emissions by 2035, a dramatic shift away from gasoline and diesel engines.
GM further said it will launch a third generation of its Hydrotec hydrogen fuel-cell systems with greater power density and lower costs by mid-decade.