Word: gm
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...increasingly unstable U.S. economy and rising gasoline prices, General Motors Corp. has unleashed another huge wave of budget and financial cuts that the company's top executives described as a "self-help" plan designed to stave off any potential "liquidity crisis." The cutbacks appear to involve every level of GM's operations, including shedding the Hummer and decreasing its support for NASCAR. Said GM's chairman and chief executive officer Richard Wagoner: "Conditions are extremely unsettled. We're trying to protect the enterprise long-term. We're going to have to ride this out for a while...
...based on very conservative assumptions that oil prices will hover in the $130-to-$150-per-bbl. range through 2009, while car sales will fall to an annual rate of about 14 million units this year and next - a level last seen during the recession of the 1990s, when GM controlled just under one-third of the U.S. market. GM is still the nation's largest carmaker, but its market share is down to about 22% and its stock price has dropped to its lowest level in more than half a century, having fallen from the $20-per-share range...
...balance the bad news, GM executives pointed to the overseas market, where the company is anything but troubled. The company had record sales in Europe during the first half of the year and posted double-digit sales gains in Latin America and China, where the company expects to sell more than a million vehicles again this year, said Mike DiGiovanni, GM's general director of market analysis. And even the bad news had a silverish lining: "We actually picked up market share [In North America] in June," said Mark LaNeve, GM vice president for vehicle sales, service and marketing. Predictions...
...issues for auto companies is an adequate supply of hybrids, and GM says it is winning that battle. "Hybrid demand and availability continues to build, and we're seeing really positive momentum with the Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon 2-mode hybrids," LaNeve added. At the same time, GM is still planning to roll out the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in electric vehicle that will run on battery power rather than gasoline, in late 2010, despite some skepticism about whether its lithium-ion battery will be ready for the road...
...GM also insists it's moving to trim costs and adjust to the new reality created by $4-per-gal. gasoline, including selling its Hummer brand. GM has also suspended design and engineering work on its next generation of pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles as it waits to see how the market will shake out. LaNeve said in a recent interview with TIME that capital spending was a key reason the Hummer had to go. With the market shifting away from trucks, GM felt it did not have enough resources to support four distinct truck brands, and the Hummer...