GM Can’t Keep Up in China, Once Seen as the Promised Land
The government focus on new-energy vehicles makes it tougher for foreign companies to compete.
An EV charging station outside a Buick dealership in Shanghai.
Photographer: Gilles Sabrie/Bloomberg
The future for General Motors Co. in China is in the hands of customers like Yang Yanjun, a 46-year-old logistics executive in Shanghai. Yang and his family own two gasoline-powered cars—a Volkswagen and an Audi—and now he’s considering whether to go electric. Strolling through a Buick showroom in eastern Shanghai, he stops to admire one of GM’s newest electric vehicles, a powder-blue Velite 6 that’s wrapped with a giant red bow and costs less than $27,000. “It’s time for a change,” he says. “We’re ready to try something new.”
Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive officer, who of late is managing labor strife at home, needs more such converts to reverse the automaker’s slide in China. The world’s biggest auto market is suffering through a year-and-a-half slump exacerbated by China’s lackluster economy and the trade war with the U.S.