Exclusive: The Inside Story of GM's Comeback and Mary Barra's Rise.

GM remains committed to electric and will introduce a natural gas-powered Impala. While the Chevy Volt technology is perfectly engineered for most drivers—who, after all, can drive as far as they want—Akerson concedes that GM has failed to change the conversation about electric vehicles. “I’ll take the hit for that,” he says. As Tesla’s market value began gaining ground earlier this year, heading past $12 billion, Akerson took note. A special team was set up to study how Tesla might disrupt the industry.

Although GM has hinted that it’s working on a next generation of electric vehicle, Akerson says it’s aiming for a compact car that can go 200 miles on a charge and carry a generator, too. While it will be similar to the Volt, engineers are working on generators that could run on gas, diesel, or natural gas. The increased electric range is coming, in part, from advances in battery chemistry. GM is planning to bring the model out in 2016, for about $30,000, according to a person familiar with the idea who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t public. It’s a project that the company doesn’t want to say much about but signifies how it’s been trying to move past inventing things to putting inventions into showrooms. “We want it to be a moon shot so we can surprise the competition,” Akerson says.


Winding down his almost 70 minutes with engineers and designers in November at the Tech Center, Akerson became reflective. “I have tried to put my heart and soul into this thing to make a difference,” he says. “But I’m 65. For those of you that are 35, 45, and 55 out there—I’m sure there are some 25s, I can’t remember when I was 25—you are the inheritors of this resurgent, transformed GM. It’s a precious thing that has to be grown,” he says. “It’s up to you.”

Barra is now the public face of GM. She’s destined for a lifetime of discussions about the role of women in corporate life, and will have to worry about making cars for at least a few years, too. She will have to think about Toyota, the rise of new players like Tesla, running a company in a bankrupt town with a declining population, and aggressively searching for talent, even if it means passing over friends.

STORY: Why Cheaper Volts Help GM Sell Pickups

Barra learned she was going to become CEO just a couple of days before the announcement, she says, though she declined to talk about the conversation with Akerson. “Obviously, I was thrilled,” she says. “I didn’t dream this would happen. … This is an industry that’s in your blood, it’s an exciting industry, it’s a tough industry, but again it’s not something that I dreamed of as a child. But I knew I wanted to be an engineer, and once I started in the car business, 30 years later I’m still here.”

“Mary may have been here 30-odd years, but I can tell you that I believe, know—and I think the board believes and knows—that Mary is a change agent,” Akerson says on the day of the announcement. “There are a lot of great things, a lot of great people at General Motors. There was a generation, I would say Mary’s generation of management, that had to learn from mistakes that were made. … Young up-and-coming leaders of General Motors learned a lot from the prior generation, good and bad, and Mary was a very astute student.”


Akerson will fade, at least for a while, from the news, though a U.S. Navy veteran who turned around an icon may find himself considering all kinds of options. Two months before announcing his retirement, before he even knew his wife was sick, he watched the Navy-Air Force football game from a skybox at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Akerson graduated from the academy in 1970 and served five years in the Navy, including time on a destroyer, as the Vietnam War wound down.

His skybox is like a man cave or little secret clubhouse in the air, so it was perfect when Roger Staubach burst through the door, striding in to join the gang. “Hey!” he cries. “That was a lot of stairs!” Staubach, of course, won two Super Bowls as the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys after serving in the Navy during Vietnam, so the stairs shouldn’t be a huge deal. Still, that was a while ago, and Staubach’s in his sixties. When he arrives, the 10 or so people in the room suddenly form a reverent semicircle around him. In the middle is Akerson.

Source:BusinessWeek.com