GM’s EV Pledge Unravels as Chevy and Cadillac Pivot Back to Gas

General Motors is done promising Cadillac and Chevrolet will go electric on any fixed timeline. CEO Mary Barra told investors Tuesday that new gas-powered Cadillacs arrive next spring. Chevrolet’s newest EV, the Bolt, stops rolling off the line before this year ends.

Electrek first reported the details from GM’s second-quarter 2026 earnings call, where Barra confirmed a new generation of internal combustion Cadillacs and a gas crossover replacing the Bolt in Kansas. Five years ago, GM promised almost the exact opposite. What’s arriving next spring is less a new strategy than the overdue invoice for the old one.

A Five-Year-Old Promise Comes Due

In April 2021, Cadillac’s global vice president at the time, Rory Harvey, told reporters, “We will be leaving this decade as an electric vehicle brand.” A couple of years earlier, then-president Steve Carlisle had already called 2030 “the end of the ICE age for Cadillac.”

GM backed the talk with paper. In its 2021 proxy filing, the company told shareholders it would eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles globally by 2035, backed by a joint venture with LG Energy Solution building battery plants in Lordstown, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tennessee. GM was, at one point, planning to spend up to $27 billion on EVs and autonomous vehicles by 2025.

That pledge started cracking in public by May 2024, when Cadillac’s newer global vice president, John Roth, acknowledged the brand would keep selling gas models well past 2030. Tuesday’s earnings call is where the crack became the whole plan.

Cadillac’s New Gas Lineup Lands Next Spring

Barra confirmed the next generation of Cadillac ICE vehicles begins arriving in spring 2027. The lineup includes an updated CT5 sedan, an XT5 SUV and a three-row XT6 SUV.

None of this replaces Cadillac’s electric SUVs outright. The Lyriq, Vistiq, Optiq and Escalade IQ keep selling alongside the new gas models, at least for now. The brand that was supposed to leave this decade selling nothing but batteries is instead running a split showroom.

Chevrolet is making the same trade. It ranked as the second best-selling EV brand in the U.S. behind Tesla through the first half of 2026, and GM is still going to sunset its newest EV inside a year of launching it.

Fairfax, Kansas Keeps Switching Lines

No single factory shows the whiplash better than GM’s Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas. The plant built Chevy Malibu sedans for two decades. Then GM retooled it, twice, for two completely different products.

1. 2003: Fairfax begins building the Chevrolet Malibu, a run that lasts into the following two decades.
2. November 2024: Malibu production ends so the plant can retool for the Bolt EV, backed by roughly a $391 million investment.
3. January 2025: The Cadillac XT4, Fairfax’s other product, also stops production.
4. September to October 2025: Workers go on temporary layoff for retooling, then GM postpones a planned second shift indefinitely, sidelining about 900 employees.
5. 2026: The redesigned Bolt EV reaches dealerships, built at Fairfax on a single shift.
6. Mid-2027: Bolt production ends and Fairfax switches to the gas-powered Chevrolet Equinox, part of a $4 billion reshoring push meant to dodge tariff costs on vehicles built in Mexico and China.
7. 2028: The next-generation Buick Envision, previously built in China, moves to Fairfax as well.

That is three different products on one assembly line in under five years, each retooling accompanied by its own round of layoffs and recalls. Workers who trained to build an EV in 2025 are now training to build a gas crossover for 2027.

The Battery Plants GM Just Went Quiet On

The retreat runs deeper than final assembly. GM’s battery joint venture with LG Energy Solution, Ultium Cells, paused cell production at two of its plants starting in January 2026, with GM telling staff it expects to resume by the middle of the year.

A GM spokesperson framed it as flexibility. CNBC reported the company said it was “realigning EV capacity” in response to slower near-term adoption and a shifting regulatory picture. The people affected are less abstract:

• Detroit’s Factory Zero EV plant: roughly 1,200 workers placed on indefinite layoff.
• Ultium Cells, Lordstown, Ohio: 550 workers laid off indefinitely and another 850 furloughed while the plant pauses and retools.
• Ultium Cells, Spring Hill, Tennessee: about 700 workers furloughed during the same production pause.
• Fairfax Assembly, Kansas: roughly 900 workers on indefinite layoff after GM shelved a planned second shift.

Those battery cells were meant to feed the same fleet of EVs GM is now scaling back, including the vehicles central to its bidirectional-charging push, a program built around 250,000 grid-capable EVs already on the road that still needs utilities to sign on. It is also a battery buildout now tangled up with rules like Colorado’s new law making automakers responsible for dead EV batteries, a regulatory layer GM has to plan around regardless of how many EVs it ultimately builds.

GM’s Bill for the U-Turn

GM has booked $10.9 billion in EV-related charges since the second half of 2025. Of that, $7.2 billion carries a cash impact, and GM had already paid out $4.5 billion of it by the end of the second quarter of 2026.

The pile started building last October, when GM disclosed a $1.6 billion impairment tied to slowing its battery plants. It has nearly tripled since.

Despite those charges, GM raised its full-year adjusted profit guidance to a range of $14 billion to $16 billion, up from $13.5 billion to $15.5 billion. Gas models cost less to retool for and carry fatter margins than a still-maturing EV lineup. Short term, the U-turn is paying for itself.

Who’s Filling the Space GM Is Giving Up?

GM is ceding ground just as competitors accelerate. Hyundai’s IONIQ 5 now outsells the Chevy Equinox EV, GM’s own top-selling electric model, and ranks as America’s third most popular EV overall. Toyota’s bZ is outselling the Equinox too.

That is Cox Automotive data reported by InsideEVs, and GM’s Equinox EV does not appear in that top five at all. Toyota’s EV sales overall surged 225% year over year in the same quarter, on the strength of a refreshed lineup that includes the bZ.

Hyundai is not slowing down to make room for GM’s exit. It just opened a $5 billion battery plant with SK On, with capacity to produce about 35 gigawatt-hours of cells a year, enough for roughly 300,000 EVs, feeding Hyundai’s Metaplant in Georgia along with future Kia and Genesis models. Rivian’s R2, BMW’s iX3 and Tesla’s Model Y L are all still arriving. Globally, the pullback looks even starker: EVs are still on pace to approach 30% of new car sales worldwide this year, a wave led by BYD that GM’s U.S.-focused retreat does nothing to meet.

GM’s Own Data Argues Against the Plan

The strangest part of GM’s pivot is that GM’s own leadership has already made the case against it. Duncan Aldred, GM’s senior vice president and president of North America, said this in May.

The broader data shows that once customers move to an EV, they tend to stay, and they are likely to choose another EV for their next vehicle.

That is Aldred, describing his own company’s customer data, months before GM confirmed it is building fewer new EVs, not more. If he’s right, every gas Cadillac and gas Equinox GM builds instead of an EV is a customer GM may have a harder time winning back once they are ready to go electric again, on somebody else’s badge.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will Cadillac Still Sell Any Electric Vehicles?

Yes. The Lyriq, Vistiq, Optiq and Escalade IQ continue alongside the new gas CT5, XT5 and XT6. GM’s Spring Hill, Tennessee plant is set to keep building the Lyriq and Vistiq at the same time it starts assembling the gas-powered XT5.

What Happened to GM’s Electric Delivery Van, BrightDrop?

GM shut the BrightDrop commercial electric van program down entirely, around the same time it announced the battery plant layoffs. It’s a sign the retreat isn’t limited to passenger cars aimed at everyday buyers.

Why Is Buick Moving Production From China to Kansas?

Tariffs. GM’s $4 billion reshoring plan brings the next-generation Buick Envision to the Fairfax plant in Kansas by 2028, part of an effort to avoid the added cost of importing Chinese-built vehicles into the U.S.

Did the End of the Federal EV Tax Credit Cause This?

It’s a major factor. The $7,500 federal credit for new EVs ended September 30, 2025, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. GM cited slower near-term EV adoption and a shifting regulatory environment when it announced the battery plant layoffs, and industrywide EV sales fell sharply in the quarter right after the credit expired before partially recovering.

Are Any Automakers Still Gaining Ground in EVs Despite the Tax Credit’s End?

Yes. Toyota’s EV sales jumped 225% year over year in the second quarter of 2026, even without the federal credit, on the back of a refreshed bZ lineup. That suggests GM’s pullback is as much a company choice as a market-wide one.