Barra's GM plans on rough road

The CEO has staked her leadership at GM on a multibillion-dollar plan to grow the automaker after decades of downsizing

Mary Barra's ambitious plan to double General Motors Co.'s revenue to $280 billion by the end of the decade has a relatively simple premise at its heart: Turn the legacy automaker into more of a tech company. Barra, the chief executive officer of one of the biggest carmakers in the US, is learning just how hard that pivot really is.

This week, the founder and CEO of Cruise, GM's autonomous-vehicle company, resigned after a series of high-profile accidents and missteps. It was a remarkable setback for a company that just two years ago was projected to bring in $50 billion in revenue by 2030, according to an investor presentation. Now, Barra is pulling back on growth plans for the unit to make sure the cars are safe and achieving that milestone on time is tough to predict, a person familiar with company plans said.

Barra has staked her leadership at the legacy automaker on a multibillion-dollar plan to grow GM after decades of downsizing. Key to that are investments in technological advancements, mainly self-driving cars and electric vehicles. To fund her vision, she closed down underperforming overseas business units, leaving markets in Europe and Asia to the likes of Toyota and Volkswagen, while pouring money into the potential vehicles of the future.

Analysts applauded Barra's plan, but developing new technologies is not GM's strength. "There's a big difference between strategy and execution," said Sam Abuelsamid, research analyst at Guidehouse Insights. "They just have not been able to build batteries and they took their eye off the ball with Cruise." Jim Cain, a spokeperson for GM said in an email, "we haven't changed our longterm targets but our immediate focus is on the 2023-2025 timeframe when we will be scaling EV production and advancing our other growth initiatives." A spokesperson for Cruise declined to comment.