GM Powers Homes, Takes #1 and Sends A Message To the PM!

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1:26Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and cleantech are funded by our fun-packed, test-drivetastic events in Farnborough, London, the South West, the North, Melbourne and Sydney, and next up, Everything Electric Farnborough, and new for UK viewers. You can now buy a battery EV and much more at everythingelectric.store. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast, where today we're actually recording this at Everything Electric Vancouver. And I'm delighted to be joined on stage by Christian Aquilina. Thank you, Imogen. Have I said your name correctly? That is close enough.

2:05It's Christian Aquilina. I think you were spot on. Yeah, and I'll tell you why I paused, because we recently recorded an episode on a converted electric 1952 mahogany aquiliner boat. But that's an aquiliner, not aquiliner. Anyway, I want to make sure I say the right thing. Okay, so let's get into it, because we only have half an hour, and there is so much ground that we need to cover. So, can you tell us who you are and what you do? And if you could give your dinner party response, that would be great. Well, I am known for rambling on at dinner parties, but here we go. My name's Christian Aquiline.

2:44I'm the President and Managing Director of GM in Canada. I have the unbelievable privilege of representing 7 ,500 employees across our country and also 450 dealers. also in every corner of Canada. So it's a wonderful privilege that I have. It's also, you know, it's a pretty cool job title, if we're honest. And I know that you've been with the organisation for a long time. There must have been a moment where you got your business card and thought, yeah, I'm quite proud of that. Yeah, I have to pinch myself every day. It's just, it is a cool, it is a very cool job. And it's just because that coming together of those individuals with all their talents, manufacturing, engineering, the commercial side of the business.

3:34Every day we come together and create value for our customers and it's so rewarding where at the end of the day, those customers get to vote and they're voting as number one at the moment. So it's something that we all as an entire team, as a GM family, are extraordinarily proud of and yeah, I get to have that title, which is pretty cool too. Yeah. And you've been with GM for a little while. I wonder if you could give us a very brief whistle-stop tour of your journey through this behemoth OEM. Well, I started my career at General Motors, as probably my accent gives away, in Australia. And back then, General Motors in Australia was known as Holden, and it was a full-scale manufacturer, engineer, and developer, designer of vehicles, primarily for the Australian market, but exported to the world.

4:27And so from day one, it really brought a global mindset to the way that you think about the automotive industry and the way that you think about your customer. And I've had the privilege of working for General Motors in various parts of the world, various parts of the organisation, and of Australia, New Zealand. I had the opportunity to represent Cadillac in its international markets based in Dubai before coming here to Canada. So that is a very shortened history of my time at General Motors. Now, General Motors probably epitomises this whole mantra of, oh, we're going to see more change in the next 10 years than we have seen, than ever happened before in the automotive industry.

5:15And I believe GM was founded in 1908. But I guess since probably 2009, it has undergone profound change. And I wonder if you could just give us just a couple of the headline stats that I've heard a couple of times this weekend around how GM's EV portfolio is performing here in Canada. Well, yeah, so from GM's perspective, like we are, as you said, 1908, we're involved in leading this amazing transformation in personal mobility from the horse and cart to the horseless carriage. and that was never more successful than it was here in Canada where the founder of a carriage maker joined forces with General Motors and thereby this beautiful thing GM Canada started.

6:08Fast forward to here we are in 2025 and we are navigating yet another fantastic transition, transformation in personal mobility which is all at its very heart is offering convenience and value to our customers that's what's really driving this transition more than anything and this technology is not limited to the electrification although that's what everyone that's what we're talking about here but it's also the coming together and convergence of other things such as the connectivity of vehicles The fact that they're more software-defined than they've ever been before, and through that, customisable for our customers.

6:52The fact that in many ways, the cars will increasingly be able to drive themselves. Today, you can drive one of our electric vehicles or gas-powered vehicles with Super Cruise and be hands-off for miles and miles on Canadian roads. and this is all coming together and offering customers the choice in a competitive environment to be the number one seller of EVs in this country, number one seller of luxury EVs under our Cadillac brand. That's something that in a very short period of time, like you suggested, has happened at just an electrifying pace. I had the privilege of going in an Optic earlier on this week.

7:37Cool. I really liked it. And I'm going to mention this. For God's sake, of all the different things in that car that you could have pointed out, why was it this? I just flipping love that, and actually the whole Cadillac line-up, that you can adjust the seats on the door rather than sort of blindly trying to find how you control the seats. I just think that is a neat feature. That's a little Cadillac signature feature, to be able to change the settings and set your massage settings just there on the door within plain sight. And anyone who gets in an optic needs to try our audio system. It is mind-blowing.

8:15I mean, we can talk about how a car drives and gets from A to B all you like, but its audio system is super cool with Dolby surround and it is just yet another experience for luxury customers. Can I ask what you drive? Yeah, we've gone from being a two gas-powered vehicle family to a two EV family. So we have a Cadillac Lyric, so the bigger version of the optic that you just turned on. It's a five-seater SUV. And we've also got a GMC Sierra EV truck, which is nearing like 800 kilometres of range. So that is just the ideal recreational slash work vehicle for us because I can put my kayak right through the back of the vehicle.

9:11The mid-gate drops down, so a full two-man kayak can get into that, plus my bicycles, and we're set for Canadian summers. I could probably move house at the same time. It is an absolutely behemoth contraption, but extremely cool. Fantastic car. Now, one of the things that strikes me about GM in Canada is that Canada is huge. and not only is it huge but it has these sort of hot spots in different cities and so I feel like your job must be extremely difficult in that you're having to have almost a very localized approach in how you speak to customers and I know that Vancouver in particular is a bit of an anomaly when compared to the rest of Canada.

9:50How on earth do you go about that? Yeah I mean it's it comes we're blessed with a team who can really think locally we have representation right across the country who give us feedback into the way that we should be going into market. And of course, the biggest strength is a dealer network, a dealer network that is in every corner of the country, very sensitive to the needs of their customers in each part of the country and can help us with understanding where products should be allocated and our approach to how we present our vehicles and our brands to the customers in their communities. is the you're right in pointing out that observation is is actually quite incisive you've got a patchwork of different policy approaches for example that drive the market in very different ways across our country as you say Vancouver benefit has been benefiting from EV incentives which were different to, say, Alberta or Calgary, right across the way.

10:57And so we adapt our approach accordingly and make sure that we've got our vehicles positioned to meet the market in each of those circumstances. One of the huge challenges about, and this has been a theme really that's emerged during this whole weekend, is that in order to develop clean energy technologies and electric vehicles and indeed any sort of OEM, You need to have that commitment to a long-term future, not least because the product cycle dictates that. But the political environment is changing on a much more frequent basis. And I think this epitomizes that. So I printed my notes on Thursday evening, which was a mistake.

11:37It changed so much. Well, quite. So my question on Thursday evening was, ZEV mandates in this region are ambitious, 100 % of sales by 2035. But sales dipped after incentives ended earlier this year. etc etc etc it goes on. Friday morning it was announced that the ZEV mandate is being temporarily scrapped whatever that means and from your perspective what is the best approach and is it just sufficient to have excellent vehicles and for that to be enough to drive this transition to electric vehicles? Well I think firstly I'm very much believer that we should be absolutely building fantastic convenient vehicles that look good or fun to drive have all the technology but really it's the it's it's really a strategy based on following the customer and being dictated by the customer their willingness to pay the their desires and choice for convenience that really should be driving the market in the transition.

12:52We at General Motors are very much pro-EV. We've released 13 EVs in the last 18 months. There's more to come. To offer that choice, there's an EV in our portfolio for every Canadian wallet and we are hungry to beat our competition in trying to meet the market better than they can. And that is what's driving our growth, our position, our ranking in the marketplace. At the same time, it's not going to be practical in every use case in a country as vast as Canada to dictate a rate of transition or an EV adoption. So we continue to invest in making our gas-powered vehicles incredibly efficient, more efficient on every release, so that that choice exists for customers.

13:46And if a certain technology, whether it be EVs, gas-powered vehicles, or hybrids in between, are going to compel a customer to come over and transition from whatever they're used to, they need to be good enough to deserve that. and we're very invested in trying to make compelling vehicles to do just that. We don't want to miss out on the technology change. Once technology that is awesome like EVs is out there, it's difficult to contain it. Customers will lead it and we want to be at the forefront of supplying them. Gosh, there's so many different ways I could take this question because I know that our audience, many of the people listening, are real diehard pro-EV fans to the extent where anything that's got hybrid in the title, we're like, oh, I don't know how we feel about those.

14:37And yet we have to be realistic about the fact that this is going to be a journey and people have to go on that journey in their own time and the way that feels most appropriate for them. And so it's a curious thing that you said there because on the one hand, in having the full portfolio, both internal combustion engine vehicles and electric vehicles, it allows people who are customers to make that transition. Maybe they currently have a GM product that has a petrol engine, but maybe their next one will be an electric vehicle. But at the same time, many of your EV customers, I believe, are new to the brand.

15:08That's right. So do you see very different, I guess, like customer profiles between your combustion engine side of the business and electric vehicle side of the business? It's an interesting question. About 60 % of our EV customers are new to GM. First time they've driven, walked into a GM dealership and purchased a GM vehicle. And by goodness, we want to make sure that they come back again. So we'll work very hard for that business. Yeah, the profile so far has been very much a tech forward, early adopter style, transitioning to that early majority type of customer. but the same fundamentals exist almost regardless of propulsion system.

16:01People demand and should receive great value for money, great convenience with the technology that they're considering to purchase. They are certainly expecting and will receive from a GM dealer great service. and those fundamentals do not change. It's like almost technology agnostic. But, and of course, the reliability. I did forget to say that reliability and the backup of, in our case, 450 dealers across the country. These are all things that are consistent regardless and yet there is slightly different profile but hey, we see EV customers across all age groups I don't know if you can paint an average EV by, I do a paint picture of them,

16:59but we're very much driven by meeting those fundamentals and making sure that an EV delivers on those expectations. So coming back to ZEV mandate and incentives, and ZEV mandate was there, now it's not there, incentives were there, they're now not there. it's really difficult because it totally changes the game from a consumer perspective of the perceived urgency and also the accessibility of these vehicles because incentives obviously help make them more affordable. If we could ring up Mark Carney and leave him a little voice note, what would you say? Yeah, so incentives, purchase incentives like that serve a purpose in accelerating what would otherwise naturally happen at a slower pace.

17:50to answer your question directly I'm talking to an economist when I'm calling Mark Carney and I would suggest this I would suggest that whilst purchase incentives as a one-off hit does play a role I think a higher priority for for our resources as they're always constrained, would be to invest in the things that are going to be generational, long-lasting and have a much broader impact on EV adoption in our country. And that's making charging infrastructure far more ubiquitous across Canada. That, I think, is a higher priority for me and that should be a focus. If you actually look at our customer data, when we ask customers who are considering an EV or may not be considering an EV, what are the main barriers?

18:54They say range, they say affordability, and they might say just the technology is not something I'm familiar with. Well, the range thing, when we produce a vehicle that can travel 800 kilometres on a single charge, That's not range anxiety. That's charger anxiety. And that is an actual thing here in Canada, not necessarily maybe in Vancouver, but you go beyond Vancouver into the northern part of our province here or anywhere in Canada, and you're just not sure whether there'll be a charger there and if it's there, whether it'll be working. Now, 800 kilometres, you can get to Kelowna and probably halfway back, probably more than that, and you don't have to worry too much about it.

19:43But for a lot of folks, that's still going to be on their mind. There's an uncertainty around whether they make that transition. So you can take that issue right out of the equation by investing in that infrastructure. It's nation-building type of infrastructure, and I think it deserves higher priority. And it is the age-old chicken-and-egg question of our electric era, I think. And just to pick up on the 800 kilometres, could that get you from Vancouver up to Kelowna? for anyone who also watches our episodes our electric boat episode that I actually mentioned at the start was in Kelowna and what's brilliant about that journey from here to Kelowna is that you can stop in a place called Hope which was where actually a lot of the Rambo films were filmed but it also has, so it's in the middle of nowhere but it has fantastic charging infrastructure so that journey becomes very easy and you can stop for really excellent sandwiches as well I'm just going to do a little time check Okay.

20:42We also will come to a few questions. So if you do have one, make sure to store it up. Oh, in a few moments' time, though. So I've clocked you and you can sit down for a little bit. I think you're number one first of the... When it does, let's cap off the rank. So the other question I have is that we've obviously mentioned the changing dev mandate here in Canada, which is the most recent news. But there's also a number of other political tensions that make life quite challenging, I would say. And recently GM announced that you're continuing to import battery cells from CATL, despite obviously those trade tensions that may exist.

21:20And of course GM has an incredibly global footprint. Like there's a design studio in the UK that is doing all sorts of secret wonderful things. Yeah, there's like a location everywhere. And so you've got this dichotomy of trying to bring more of GM's footprint within the US, but also having to square that with the fact that it is a global organisation with global partnerships. Right. That must make your life very hard. How can you operate in those particular environments? Well, the difficulty that comes with any geopolitical or a phase of geopolitical tensions that are shifting and they're always moving and your investments are much longer term and durable than the speed at which those tensions can shift.

22:12But just to point out there, I mean, it's... When most of... We like to build vehicles close to where we sell them. We like to source materials now, particularly. We've learned a lot in the last five, six years. We like to source materials closer to where we make the vehicles, near shore and reduce risks, just generally. do that in an economic way for our customers. Yes, you're right that we are temporarily utilising CATL LFP cells to bridge a gap to when we can actually get our own battery cell or our joint venture battery cell production up and running in the United States. And so it's really a stopgap solution.

23:02and really that's just in response to managing, of course we're managing through all of the geopolitical stuff but really at the heart of it is we're responding to the customer. Customer said, we love your EVs, we'd like potentially a lower cost version, maybe we're not going to prioritise range so much so for the use case that a lot of those customers are showing up for, well, inner urban kind of transport can go several days without need for a charge, but don't want to necessarily spend a lot of money on the capital outlay for the vehicle. How can we respond to that? Yeah, we're going to move quickly to bring an LFP chemistry battery in, the highest cost part of the vehicle, of course, and make that available as quickly as we can.

23:53since then you know changes in the geopolitical situation have shifted but we're able to continue to along that strategy with an eye on what we'll eventually ultimately do to provide that same affordability with a near short solution and that's how we're just navigating that particular use case. And of course here in Canada it is blessed with a huge number of critical raw materials. Yes. How is GM thinking about leveraging what is on offer here and those supply chains? Yeah, so we're looking at a variety of chemistries at the moment. Some of those really lend themselves nicely to what Canada has to offer, such as its immense nickel resources in our high-nickel chemistry batteries.

24:46And yeah, so we're taking that opportunity, sourcing some of those materials, but also doing some of the added value processing of those materials here in Canada. We're building a facility with our joint venture partner at the moment in Quebec, which would take nickel and some of the other materials, inputs, and we'll make the CAM material, the cathode side of the battery for a lithium-ion battery, which we will then export to our battery cell plants in other parts of the continent to turn that into a cell and then eventually a battery pack wherever we make the battery pack. So that's just one example.

25:28And, you know, we have other agreements. Near shoring onto the continent provides opportunities for Canada. We have an arrangement with another provider of naturally forming graphite to help on the anodes. and that's going to be another opportunity to pursue. So we're being opportunistic about where those chances lie for Canada to play a role in our entire battery supply chain. I will come to the question. I haven't forgotten it. Just want to reassure you. So GM has recently formed a partnership with Hyundai in pursuit of those lower-cost EVs, I believe. And also, here in Canada, there aren't Chinese EVs.

26:16And so, I know those two statements sort of sound unrelated, but I suppose the question is, at the moment you have that benefit of not having to compete with Chinese EVs, but very quickly there is still that need to have greater affordability in the EV sector. And how much of that partnership with Hyundai is in anticipation of competing more substantially with Chinese EVs? Yeah, it's certainly a part of the puzzle. It's not the only lever that we're pulling here to just rapidly increase our competitiveness and translate some of the benefit of that to it for our customers. So, for example, the deal with Hyundai, yes, it allows us to co-develop some vehicles together, but really the opportunity for between us I think we produce and sell across the globe something like 10 million vehicles that's enormous scale to bring to our battery supply chains wherever we can or any supply chains our development costs we can wherever we can look for complementary opportunities to collaborate, it only benefits those folks who are considering purchasing our vehicles and owning our vehicles.

27:41So that's just one of the responses. We're confident with, you know, with GM's capability and design, our brands and what they promised, the service that our dealerships around the country, around both countries offer, that we're preparing ourselves to face any competitor, no matter where they come from. So that's the work that's going on. I think there's plenty of opportunity to improve our readiness. So the podcast that's going out before yours is with RJ Scarridge, who's CEO of Rivian. And I asked him this question as well. If you had to go and work, had to go and apply for a job at another OEM, and let's say it's not like a super duper fancy title like you currently have.

28:33Oh no. And this can be an OEM past or present and it can't be GM. Where would you apply? For reference, RJ said that he'd go and be a track engineer at Porsche or like a test driver at Porsche. Porsche immediately came to my mind too. because, you know, I just remember the posters that I had when I was growing up as a kid were Porsches and Holden's, General Motors in Australia. They were the two sort of, you know, brands that I really admired. Jeez, that's a tough question because, you know, we consider Porsches a competitor nowadays. We've got this wonderful Corvette. It's a mid-engine thing.

29:29It goes around a track really quick. And, you know, there is a... I don't know if there's anyone out there that's not a competitor. I'm actually... I might come back to you on that question. That's a really tough one. It is a really tough question, and it's an unfair one that I didn't prepare you for, either. That's OK. I don't want anyone, my employers especially, getting any intention on thinking else. That was the best response for them, actually. Well, yeah, everyone's a competitor, and yeah, that was an extremely diplomatic answer as well. The gentleman who is here, let's go to your question, and then we'll come over there.

30:06Hi. I think it's fair to say that in Canada, we have a habit of taking our natural resources, and in some cases, selling them to other countries to manufacture things, and then bringing them back for us to buy. and with there hasn't been the t-word mentioned much here in the last two days with the tariffs is that going to make it more difficult i believe the bright drop is the only electric vehicle uh that gm makes that's uh manufactured here in canada or assembled at least yeah as a finished vehicle yeah yep is that going to mean that we might lose them or we would lose future general Motors manufacturing because of that, because of the tariff situation?

30:55Or is there something in GM's long term where that very important Southern Ontario niche of putting cars together is on their agenda? Yeah, it's this trade dynamic that has emerged in the last, you know, I guess few months, half a year, I suppose, really does prompt us to do, to take really a step back and make sure that, okay, when it comes to Canada's role in the automotive industry or in GM, Canada's role within the GM manufacturing footprint. How should we best respond to the situation? The situation is pretty unclear. It has, it is riddled with ambiguity, but the best thing you can do in times of ambiguity and uncertainty is invest in your ability to react, to be agile, to be able to adapt to the situation.

32:00And that's where we've invested a hell of a lot of time, resources, thinking about, we've been spending a lot of time with our people, making sure that we're ready to be resilient, but also agile through that time. We're continuing to invest here in Canada. We're very excited about the prospects and our role in the automotive industry within the General Motors manufacturing footprint but also beyond manufacturing. We're investing in tech talent. We're doing, we have 12 to 1300 software engineers and hardware engineers. They're also in Ontario coming from the best of Canadian universities and the talent from around the world and these are the people that are working on those very things that I was describing before, that trend around connectivity of the vehicles, the electrification of them, the software basis of the vehicles, as well as their autonomous capability with supercruise, we've got that happening here in Canada.

33:14So in summary, we've spent a bit of time taking the opportunity to work out what we need to do to be agile to whatever happens and show durability through times of ambiguity. And I think the team's responded amazingly to that challenge. Thank you so much for your question. I guess related to that, it's hard, right? And there must be days where you're like, oh, for goodness sake, this is just quite annoying and more than quite annoying, worrying at times as well. So if the power of this event, the power of this podcast could grant you a wish, sort of one thing that you'd be like, do you know what, that would make life really a lot easier over the next 12 to 18 months.