General Motors held its annual shareholder event Monday, and CEO Mary Barra announced several EV models, shareholders rejected a proposal to separate the role of board chair and CEO, and perhaps most importantly, the company emphasized its push into electric vehicles as its number one priority. What comes next as the legacy automaker tries to compete with Detroit neighbor Ford, as well as EV giant Tesla? Lisa Whalen, automotive & mobility analyst at Morning Consult, joins Closing Bell to discuss. 

Closing Bell

GM Holds Annual Shareholder Event, Emphasizing EV Push

well as we watch all of this play out, General Motors today holding its annual shareholder meeting. A top of mind for many investors is how well the company's multi billion dollar electric vehicle investment is paying off and so far, GM announcing that its Chevy Blazer will be unveiled on july 18th. The All electric Suv expected to finally go on sale next year along with the electric version of the Chevy Equinox. Well GM also saying that shareholders have rejected a proposal to separate the rules of board chair and Ceo and joining me now is lisa Whalen automotive and mobility analyst at morning consult a global research intelligence firm ah lisa it's good to see you what are the biggest takeaways that you have today from this meeting with GM shares down close to 8%. Not surprisingly, GM focused a lot on their E. G push and investment, which is really important because GM along with most of the other major automakers have made very bold statements in terms of becoming fully electric within the next several years. So it's important to continuously back up those statements because consumers are sort of lagging behind a lot of that optimism around E. V. S and they need to take them along for the ride along with investors, 8% drop in shares of General Motors, certainly underperforming the broader market lisa and we know supply chain challenges, seemingly hurting some of the automotive companies the worst what is the state of the supply chain as it pertains to GM. I'm especially with electric vehicles. The supply chain continues to be challenged. It's challenged on top of challenge on top of challenge. A lot of strain, you know, beginning with the Covid and the chip shortage during the Covid period and exacerbated certainly by the geopolitical crisis in Russia and Ukraine causing a lot of crunch on natural resources that are input into chips and other important commodities for vehicles. So certainly the industry continues to be strained. Uh, that means lack of selection for consumers and go skyrocketing prices, skyrocketing, skyrocketing prices, lisa, what do you think this does mean for consumers of prices become so high inventory becomes so tight? Is it a case that GM could actually potentially lose money in some of the quarters ahead? Many of the automotive companies are struggling certainly with profitability pressures because of pricing and lack of selection coupled with the fact that they're making such aggressive investments on the baby front. So there's certainly strain across the board with automakers in general. Well, consumers, we know prices up across the board 8.6% inflation in May from the same time, a year ago, gas prices through the roof that would actually make an electric vehicle more attractive. But when you look at affordability, clearly with part shortages and pressures across the supply chain, I think it is still hard to kind of make that affordability argument lee so what's the inflection point for these automakers, when consumers can actually look at what's coming off the vehicle delivery line and think, okay, this might now make sense for me. There's a ways to go for sure. You've talked about so many different pressures coming at consumer wallets and purchasing perspectives. Gas prices for share vehicle prices. Absolutely. But tv prices are even more than the average M. S. R. P. For a traditional vehicle. In fact, interestingly enough, 61 1% of those not interested in purchasing an E. V. Within the next five years site price is the major factor impeding that purchase intent. Now, what about the federal government? I mean already they do offer rebates incentives from a financial perspective to actually make the switch to an electric vehicle lisa. Do you think that there's more the federal government could do to make TVs that GM is selling more attractive? Well, we definitely know that limiting the cap on the number of tax credits and a manufacturer can offer it would be important. And we do know recently the major ceos of some of the key companies have put in a plea for that to remove the cap because we know GM and Tesla have already bumped up against that cap. So it's really important that if you want to sell more Dvds, you gotta open it up to more consumers that can actually afford the product. And realistically, even though the biden administration did commit billions of dollars to build out of public charging infrastructure lisa. When do you think we actually see that come to fruition? I know this massive trillion dollar plus infrastructure bill yet. It has yet to actually see a lot of those dollars deployed. Yeah it will. As with many government programs it's going to take quite a while to actually get off the ground to be deployed. You know you need to apply for the grant, be approved for the grant and then of course get into executing um individual products. And at this point we know that only about 6% of consumers across the country are reporting having continuous E. V. Charging access for their vehicle polls that are parked at home. So we have a huge upward hill to climb with respect to getting more ubiquitous charging for consumers. All right lisa Whalen automotive and mobility analyst at morning consult lisa. Thanks again for taking the time.