MONTEREY, Calif. – Mark Reuss has a unique perspective from his post at General Motors (GM). Reuss, president of GM since 2019 and a 34-year GM employee, has his fingers in all GM brands, including Cadillac, Chevrolet and Buick. He is responsible for everything from global research and development to manufacturing and electric vehicle initiatives, such as battery strategy and development.
He is also a motorsports and track enthusiast who has seen GM move deeper into racing with programs from Chevrolet and Cadillac. Reuss joined Yahoo Finance for a chat at Monterey Car Week, where Cadillac unveiled its latest creation: the Opulent Velocity concept car, which not only represents the next stage of Cadillac’s EV expansion, but also marks the 20th anniversary of the brand’s foray into motorsports, which Reuss spearheaded.
Here is an edited excerpt from the interview.
Pras Subramanian: Monterey Car Week is an important event for Cadillac, where many discerning customers and clients come to see the company’s vision. Is the Opulent Velocity a vision of Cadillac’s future?
Mark Reuss: You know, if you think back to the Celestiq (Cadillac’s $300,000 electric sedan), when we first showed it, it was a concept car and people were like, “Wow, you should do that. That really makes a statement. It’s something that really makes Cadillac stand out.” And of course we wanted to do it and we tried it.
But if you think about it, we’re looking beyond the horizon to the future of Cadillac and what that design language would look like. And if you look at our product portfolio, we’ve taken that language from the front to the rear to the really advanced design of the Celestiq into all of our products. And it’s time to step back again and use this car to look beyond the horizon and look at technology, performance and sophistication and what Cadillac is going to become. So you’ll see some of those things, maybe quite a lot of them, coming into our portfolio in the future.
Cadillac’s electrification strategy has taken a turn. The original goal for full electrification was 2030. Now Cadillac is saying, “We’re going to give people options for all kinds of powertrains.” Is that the strategy?
Absolutely. We’ve always said we have a really good inherent advantage in our manufacturing capacity and footprint, so we can actually do both and really let the market tell us what it wants and when it wants it.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing. And you know, Lyriq is off to a great start; it’s kind of the second best luxury electric car in the world. And we’re selling almost 3,000 a month, which is fantastic, and we’re doing that because it’s a fantastic car.
You also pointed out that GM’s electric car sales were up 40% year over year in the second quarter. Let’s talk about the overall auto market in the US and GM’s positioning. What does the market look like right now for that consumer, both at the high end and low end?
Well, General Motors has been known for basically its entire history for making different things for different people of all income levels and interests. That’s kind of American, right? And we do that for everybody. So we have everything from the (Chevy) Trax to the (Buick) Envista, the Celestiq and all those things, and we’re really proud of that. And I don’t think that’s going to change.
The market outlook itself – we’re at about (an annual sales rate of 16 million cars in the US), give or take, for next year, I think. So maybe 16.2 million, 16.3 million. We’ll see.
But we are (almost at full capacity) and we will make those decisions, but we will not seek to overproduce vehicles. In fact, we offer the lowest incentives in the industry and that is because of the strength of our products.
So people really want what we have. We charge a fair price and offer no incentives for it.
One more point while we have you here. The new Corvette ZR1 has been on display in several locations here in Monterey. I know you were instrumental in making this program a reality. What did you have to do to push your engineers and your staff to get this car to the level it needs to be called a ZR1?
I think it starts with designing a mid-engine car. We have the best people in the world and that’s a huge advantage. So when we started designing the Stingray (current generation C8 Corvette), we designed the car to carry the batteries for the E-Ray (hybrid). We designed the car to carry the 67-millimeter twin turbos from the Gemini engine (of the ZR1).
The front-engine car (previous generation C7) had to be turbocharged because we couldn’t put those turbochargers in. So those were things we had to do on the ZR1.
When you start opening up the architecture and the aperture, people get really creative and excited, and we’re just happy to have people like that in our company.
Pras Subramanian is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Þjórsárdalur and further Instagram.
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