Dive Brief:
- General Motors is undertaking several efforts to strengthen its supply chain, including investing in onshoring and rightsizing its battery sourcing, executives said on a July 21 earnings call.
- The company, which already expects to spend $9 billion on U.S. manufacturing this year, is lining up between $1 billion and $1.5 billion in additional funds to support onshore production in 2027, executives said on the call.
- The effort will bring the automaker’s U.S. production capacity to 2 million units and reduce tariff exposure, according to CEO Mary Barra.
Dive Insight:
General Motors is pulling multiple levers to ensure supply chain resiliency as trade winds shift and costs rise.
The company’s plans to invest further in U.S. production have accelerated since the beginning of 2025. Most recently, the automaker said it would spend $275 million to boost production of full-size and midsize trucks and a future Cadillac model at its Spring Hill Manufacturing Plant in Tennessee. GM also said in January it would be shifting production of its Buick Envision model to the U.S. from China, beginning in 2028.
Beyond its ongoing investments in bringing more production to the U.S., the company is also shoring up access to critical supplies used within its vehicles, such as memory and semiconductors.
For instance, the automaker has expanded its supplier relationship with Micron Technology, giving it access to critical memory technology while deepening integration across vehicle platforms, reinforcing supply availability for the long term. Per an agreement signed this month, Micron will provide low-power double-data-rate memory, NOR and universal flash storage NAND products to GM.
Beyond Micron, GM has “a strong” supplier relationship with Samsung, Barra said on the July 21 earnings call, noting that the partnerships with both suppliers date back to 2022.
“We haven't disclosed specific pricing, but I think we've got a good relationship with both suppliers, and we're going to continue to work with them and align on next-generation memory technology, so we can have jointly developed technology road map that I think will enable us to not only enable future product innovation, but also performance improvement as we go forward,” Barra said.
Continuing to ensure adequate memory supply will be critical as GM advances a technology-focused vehicle production strategy, which includes the development of a next-generation computing architecture expected to launch in 2028.
These moves come as the company continues to deal with and expect more commodity and logistics costs this year, but executives are confident the strategy, particularly to bet on domestic manufacturing, will help it overcome these hurdles.
“The investments we are making to onshore production, launch key vehicles and expand full-size SUV capacity will give us more flexibility and position us to grow revenue, gain market share and improve profitability in 2027,” CFO Paul Jacobson said on the earnings call.
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