Website www.gm.com

 

General Motors Company, commonly known as GM (listed General Motors Corporation before 2009), is an American multinationalautomotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, and the world's largest automaker, by vehicle unit sales, in 2011.

 

GM employs 202,000 people and does business in some 157 countries. General Motors produces cars and trucks in 31 countries, and sells and services these vehicles through the following four regional segments, which are GM North America (GMNA), GM Europe (GME), GM International Operations (GMIO), and GM South America (GMSA), thru which development, production, marketing and sales are organised in their respective world regions, plus as fifth segment GM Financial.

 

General Motors (GM) automobile marques are Alpheon, Baojun, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Jiefang, Opel, Vauxhall, Holden, and Wuling.

 

GM acts in most countries outside the USA via direct subsidiaries, but in China thru 10 joint ventures, among them Shanghai GM and SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile[4]:p.18. GM owns (per 31 December 2011) 77.0% of its joint venture in South Korea, GM Korea GM's OnStar subsidiary provides vehicle safety, security and information services.

 

In 2009, the company emerged from a government backed Chapter 11 reorganization. In 2010, GM made an initial public offering that was one of the world's top 5 largest IPOs to date. GM returned to profitability in 2011.

 

North America

GM products focus primarily on its four core divisions – Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC. The GM restructuring has resulted in a lower break even point for annual sales. The restructuring of GM has allowed the company to continue to produce high-quality, safe, and fuel-efficient cars.

 

In the mid 2005, GM announced that its corporate chrome power emblem "Mark of Excellence" would begin appearing on all recently introduced and all-new 2006 model vehicles produced and sold in North America. However, in 2009 the "New GM" reversed this, saying that emphasis on its four core divisions would downplay the GM logo.[34]

GM is now the largest car manufacturer in the US with a market share of 18.4% in May 2012.

 

Small car sales

From the 1920s onward, General Motors always maintained an internal dialog about what its economy-car and small-car policies should be. The economy and size considerations often naturally overlapped, although a strong distinction was always drawn in the 20th century between policies for the U.S. market and policies for other markets. Economy (in some form) always had good demand anywhere, but its definition in the U.S. was long considered different from that in other markets. In this view, "economy" in the U.S. did not mean "small" in the sense of what qualified as "small" outside the U.S. The policy discussion often focused on topics like the higher demand for truly small cars in non-U.S. markets than in the U.S., and whether it made more sense to import a car into a certain country or to build it domestically within that country, either as some variant of knockdown or with truly extensive domestic sourcing.

 

GM's acquisitions of Vauxhall Motors Ltd (UK, 1925)[50] and Adam Opel AG (Germany, 1929), rather than starting new domestic companies to compete against them, were based on analyses that convinced GM managers that acquiring an existing domestic manufacturer was a better business decision.

 

Although GM since the 1920s has always offered economy models in the U.S. market (relative to that market's definition in any given decade), and had done research and development in the 1940s and 1950s in preparation for any potential rise of strong demand for truly small cars in the U.S. market, it has also been criticized over the decades for not doing enough to promote fuel efficiency in the U.S. market in the 1970s through 1990s. GM's response has been that it has always responded to market demands, and that most Americans, despite anything they said to the contrary, did not actually demand (at purchasing-decision time) small size or fuel efficiency in their vehicles to any great or lasting extent. Although some U.S. consumers flocked temporarily to the ideal of fuel economy whenever fuel supply crises arose (such as 1973 and 1979), they flocked equally enthusiastically to SUVs when cheap fuel of the 1980s and 1990s temporarily shielded them from any downside to these choices.

 

Since the return of high fuel prices in the 2000s and 2010s, GM's interest in [truly-]small-car programs for the U.S. market has been renewed. As part of General Motors Company development, it plans to revive one of its idled U.S. factories for the production of a small car in Orion, Michigan, with the creation of 1,200 American jobs. This will be the first time ever that a large manufacturer produces a supermini vehicle in the United States. The new small car will add to a group of small and fuel-efficient vehicles that the company is planning to roll out in the near future. This retooled plant will be capable of building 160,000 cars annually, including both small and compact vehicles.

 

General Motors is one of the leading users in renewable energy. The company has published principles regarding the environment and maintains an extensive website to inform the public. In 2008, General Motors committed to engineering half of its manufacturing plants to be landfill-free. In order to achieve its landfill-free status, production waste is recycled or reused in the manufacturing process.

 

The world's largest rooftop solar power installation was installed at General Motors Spanish Zaragoza Manufacturing Plant in fall 2008. The Zaragoza solar installation has about 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2) of roof at the plant and contains about 85,000 solar panels. The installation was created, owned and operated by Veolia Environment and Clairvoyant Energy, who lease the rooftop area from General Motors.  In 2011, the company also invested $7.5 million in solar-panel provider Sunlogics, which will install solar panels on GM facilities.

 

The company has long worked on alternative-technology vehicles, and has led the industry with ethanol-burning flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on either E85 (ethanol) or gasoline. The company was the first to use turbochargers and was an early proponent of V6 engines in the 1960s, but quickly lost interest as the muscle car race took hold. They demonstrated gas turbine vehicles powered by kerosene, an area of interest throughout the industry, but abandoned the alternative engine configuration in view of the 1973 oil crisis. In the 1970s and 1980s, GM pushed the benefits of diesel engines and cylinder deactivation technologies with disastrous results due to poor durability in the Oldsmobile diesels and drivability issues in the Cadillac V8-6-4 variable-cylinder engines. In 1987, GM, in conjunction with AeroVironment, built the Sunraycer, which won the inaugural World Solar Challenge and was a showcase of advanced technology. Much of the technology from Sunraycer found its way into the Impact prototype electric vehicle (also built by Aerovironment) and was the predecessor to the General Motors EV1.

 

GM supported a compromise version of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard increase from 27 mpg-US (8.7 L/100 km; 32 mpg-imp) to 35 mpg-US (6.7 L/100 km; 42 mpg-imp), the first such increase in over 20 years.GM announced they will introduce more Volt-based plug-in hybrids.