GM and Ford are talking less and less about EVs
GM and Ford are talking less and less about EVs
通用汽车和福特在财报电话会议中越来越少提及电动汽车
Just a few short years ago, General Motors and Ford were all in on electric vehicles, spending billions of dollars on those efforts. Now the two biggest American automakers are hardly talking about EVs with their investors. 就在短短几年前，通用汽车（General Motors）和福特（Ford）还全力投入电动汽车领域，为此投入了数十亿美元。如今，这两家美国最大的汽车制造商在与投资者交流时，几乎不再提及电动汽车。
TechCrunch teamed up with Hudson Labs, a New York-based financial research firm, to analyze the last seven years of GM and Ford quarterly earnings calls and found that both companies are talking about EVs at a lower rate than they did before the pandemic. TechCrunch 与总部位于纽约的金融研究公司 Hudson Labs 合作，分析了通用汽车和福特过去七年的季度财报电话会议记录，发现两家公司提及电动汽车的频率均低于疫情前水平。
This shouldn’t shock anyone who’s followed the news over the last two years. Both companies have altered, delayed, or outright abandoned plans for new EV models, prompting layoffs and scaled-back factory plans. And while GM and Ford still sell EVs and have new models in their product pipelines, their collective focus has shifted, and it shows in the data. 对于过去两年一直关注相关新闻的人来说，这并不令人惊讶。两家公司都修改、推迟甚至彻底放弃了新的电动汽车车型计划，导致了裁员和工厂计划的缩减。尽管通用汽车和福特仍在销售电动汽车，且产品线中还有新车型，但它们的整体重心已经转移，这一点在数据中得到了体现。
Jim Cain, a spokesperson for GM, said that “quality counts more than quantity.” “We’ve been very clear and consistent in communicating our view that EVs are the end game, the strength of our portfolio today, the loyalty of EV customers to the technology, awards we’ve won, our growing EV market share, and our commitment to continue investing in technologies like LMR (lithium manganese-rich) to improve profitability,” he said in an emailed statement. 通用汽车发言人吉姆·凯恩（Jim Cain）表示，“质量重于数量”。他在一份电子邮件声明中称：“我们一直非常明确且一致地传达我们的观点，即电动汽车是最终目标。它是我们当前产品组合的优势，体现了电动汽车客户对技术的忠诚度、我们所获得的奖项、我们不断增长的电动汽车市场份额，以及我们致力于继续投资锂锰富集（LMR）等技术以提高盈利能力的承诺。”
But, he added, “we devote time on the calls to discuss growth opportunities like software and services and autonomous technology, and address complex topics of analyst/investor interest like trade and regulatory policy impacts, operating performance, capital allocation, regional performance, headwinds and tailwinds — all while making sure at least half the call is devoted to Q&A.” 但他补充道：“我们在电话会议中投入时间讨论软件、服务和自动驾驶技术等增长机会，并解决分析师/投资者感兴趣的复杂议题，如贸易和监管政策的影响、经营业绩、资本配置、区域表现、顺风和逆风因素——同时确保至少一半的会议时间用于问答环节。”
Ford spokesperson David Tovar, meanwhile, pointed to the company’s planned launch of its new “Universal Electric Vehicle” platform next year. “[W]e think the first product rolling off the line, a midsize pickup truck, will hit the sweet spot of the EV market for cost, price, and technology,” he said. 与此同时，福特发言人戴维·托瓦尔（David Tovar）指出了公司计划于明年推出的全新“通用电动汽车”（Universal Electric Vehicle）平台。他说：“我们认为，首款下线的产品——一款中型皮卡——将在成本、价格和技术方面切中电动汽车市场的最佳平衡点。”
For this analysis, TechCrunch excluded the ostensible third of the Detroit Big Three, Stellantis, for a few reasons. The automaker, which emerged in 2021 from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Group, traditionally lagged behind its U.S. counterparts in EV adoption. Stellantis also, until the first quarter of this year, held comprehensive earnings calls only twice a year, instead of four times annually, like most public companies. 在本次分析中，TechCrunch 出于几个原因排除了底特律三大车企中的第三家——Stellantis。这家由菲亚特克莱斯勒（Fiat Chrysler）与法国标致雪铁龙集团（PSA Group）于 2021 年合并而成的汽车制造商，在电动汽车普及方面历来落后于美国同行。此外，直到今年第一季度，Stellantis 每年仅举行两次综合财报电话会议，而非像大多数上市公司那样每年举行四次。
Hudson Labs sourced earnings call transcripts from S&P Market Intelligence dating back to 2019 and used its Co-Analyst — an AI research tool purpose-built for high-precision financial research — to assign topic tags to each sentence. It then counted the frequency of those topics, as well as each topic’s share of the discussion, to produce the charts below. Hudson Labs 从标普全球市场情报（S&P Market Intelligence）获取了自 2019 年以来的财报电话会议记录，并使用其专为高精度金融研究打造的 AI 研究工具“Co-Analyst”为每个句子分配主题标签。随后，它统计了这些主题的频率以及每个主题在讨论中所占的比例，从而制作了下方的图表。
General Motors
通用汽车
GM bet on mass-market EVs before most other major automakers. It debuted the Bolt EV at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2016 and put the car on sale by the end of that year — a healthy six months or so ahead of Tesla’s first deliveries of the Model 3. 通用汽车在大多数其他主要汽车制造商之前就押注于大众市场电动汽车。它于 2016 年 1 月在国际消费类电子产品展览会（CES）上首次亮相了 Bolt EV，并于当年年底上市——这比特斯拉首次交付 Model 3 早了大约六个月。
EVs really became a focus of GM’s earnings calls as its investment ramped up in 2019 and into 2020. At that point, the company was teasing new made-in-the-U.S. models and talking about transforming Cadillac into an all-electric brand. 随着 2019 年至 2020 年投资力度的加大，电动汽车真正成为了通用汽车财报电话会议的焦点。当时，该公司正在预告新的美国制造车型，并谈论将凯迪拉克（Cadillac）转型为纯电动品牌。
GM spent an increasing amount of time talking about its EV plans through early 2021, with more than 100 references to electric vehicles on each of its last two earnings calls in 2020. That meant EVs accounted for roughly a third of the overall discussion on those calls. 到 2021 年初，通用汽车花费了越来越多的时间讨论其电动汽车计划，在 2020 年最后两次财报电话会议中，每次提及电动汽车的次数都超过 100 次。这意味着电动汽车在这些会议的整体讨论中约占三分之一。
Aside from a dip in the first quarter of 2021, when companies around the world were dealing with a major chip shortage, GM spent nearly the next four years — notably while President Biden was in office — dedicating around a quarter of each earnings call to discussing EVs. (Another notable dip that came in the first quarter of 2025 was attributable to President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, which dominated that earnings call.) 除了 2021 年第一季度因全球芯片短缺导致提及率下降外，在接下来的近四年里——特别是在拜登总统任期内——通用汽车在每次财报电话会议中大约四分之一的时间都在讨论电动汽车。（2025 年第一季度的另一次显著下降归因于特朗普总统的“解放日”关税政策，该议题主导了那次财报电话会议。）
After Trump regained office, he slashed environmental regulations that incentivized zero-emissions vehicles, and his party tore up the $7,500 federal tax credit for new EVs. At the same time, GM’s talk of EVs dropped significantly, from 82 mentions on the second-quarter call in 2025, to just 21 on its most recent call covering Q2 2026. 特朗普重返总统职位后，削减了鼓励零排放汽车的环境法规，其所在的党派也废除了针对新电动汽车的 7,500 美元联邦税收抵免。与此同时，通用汽车对电动汽车的讨论大幅减少，从 2025 年第二季度财报会议上的 82 次提及，降至最近一次 2026 年第二季度会议上的仅 21 次。
While GM remains the second-largest seller of EVs in the U.S., the company that once made the lofty promise to go all-electric by 2035 is now talking more about how it has “align[ed] our EV capacity and manufacturing footprint with the changes in regulatory policy” — when it talks about EVs at all. 尽管通用汽车仍是美国第二大电动汽车销售商，但这家曾经做出“到 2035 年实现全面电动化”宏伟承诺的公司，现在更多地是在谈论如何“根据监管政策的变化调整我们的电动汽车产能和制造布局”——前提是它还会谈论电动汽车的话题。
Ford
福特
Ford’s first serious entry into the world of mass-market EVs was the Mustang Mach-E, which debuted in late 2019. As the company got closer to delivering the first models in late 2020, it started talking more and more about electric vehicles on its earnings calls. 福特首次认真进入大众市场电动汽车领域的产品是 Mustang Mach-E，该车型于 2019 年底首次亮相。随着公司在 2020 年底临近交付首批车型，它开始在财报电话会议中越来越多地谈论电动汽车。
Aside from a similar dip in mentions on the Q1 2021 call, which was bogged down by talk of the global semiconductor shortage, Ford — like GM — started spending around a third of each quarterly investor check-in talking about EVs. Those discussions were buoyed by the launch of its second major EV model, the F-150 Lightning, in 2021. 除了 2021 年第一季度因全球半导体短缺问题导致提及率下降外，福特和通用汽车一样，开始将每次季度投资者沟通会约三分之一的时间用于讨论电动汽车。随着 2021 年其第二款主要电动车型 F-150 Lightning 的推出，这些讨论得到了进一步推动。
And that level of focus largely held through the Biden years, as his administration freed up federal money for charging stations and EV manufacturing credits, while shaping policy around the battery material supply chain. 这种关注度在拜登执政期间基本保持稳定，因为他的政府为充电站和电动汽车制造信贷提供了联邦资金，并围绕电池材料供应链制定了相关政策。
Ford began talking less about EVs before the 2024 election, though. By the middle of that year, the company was already backing away from some of its largest contemporary EV investments in favor of a skunkworks project that ultimately became the Universal Electric Vehicle platform. 不过，福特在 2024 年大选前就开始减少对电动汽车的讨论。到那年中期，该公司已经开始缩减一些当时最大的电动汽车投资，转而支持一个最终演变为“通用电动汽车”平台的秘密项目。
Talk of EVs dipped further after Trump took office, with CEO Jim Farley spending more time discussing support for the president’s protectionist trade policy and the company’s near-term focus on its higher-margin gas F-Series trucks. Still, on Ford’s most re… 特朗普上任后，对电动汽车的讨论进一步减少，首席执行官吉姆·法利（Jim Farley）花费更多时间讨论对总统保护主义贸易政策的支持，以及公司近期对利润率更高的燃油版 F 系列皮卡的关注。尽管如此，在福特最近的……