GM creates new EV org and tools to help support its new electric vehicle programs

GM is getting serious about its new electric vehicles coming to market in the new few years, and it is going to support them with a new EV organization and tools.

As we reported yesterday, GM announced an acceleration of its EV plans with 30 new EV models by 2025 at the Barclays automotive conference.

GM also announced at the event that it is putting together a new EV organization, and it named Travis Hester as its chief EV officer.

Hester is a 25-year GM veteran with a mechanical engineering background.

Most recently, he was leading customer experience at GM.

Here’s where his new role fits in the GM leadership and the new EV organization within the company:

As part of his role, Hester is developing a new program called Ultifi. He said:

While Ultium underpins our upcoming EV hardware, Ultifi underpins our customer experience commitment for those EVs. It’s a digital unification platform across the entire journey: Purchase, Onboarding, and Ownership.

• Here are the key elements of Ultifi:
  • We’ll simplify the shopping and purchase experience for EV buyers, with new levels of transparency, speed, and convenience.
  • With our dealer network, we will use EVs as an opportunity to dramatically improve our industry’s use of e-commerce and digital retail.
  • You can see the early evidence of this with HUMMER EV — clear and simple pricing, and a fully digital reservation system.
  • Whether customers choose to shop and buy online, visit the showroom, or a blend of both, we’ll optimize those experiences.
  • We’ve also rapidly enhanced existing online tools like SCD, with much more to come in 2021.

It will englobe the entire experience and GM’s deployment of services for its electric vehicle programs.

Electrek’s Take

Short of starting a brand-new company for electric vehicles, I think this is the best move GM could have made.

They need to have a group that operates solely to promote electric vehicles within the company without having to worry about their legacy gas-powered business.

Now, I understand that they might still face some pushback, especially at the dealership level, but I also think this is definitely a step in the right direction.

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