I'm afraid this ship has sailed along time ago, and it will take a drastic improvement for potential clients to regain their trust. Further, other nameplates known for their refinedness, have begun to substantially close the gap.
2026 GMC Sierra EV Denali - Things aren’t going so well.
- Thread starter IveBeenRued
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Problem is, their sales aren’t staying the same. Jeep sales for instance have cratered.
Good. Build a decent vehicle and the sales will continue.
It seems like it, however, for 2025 Jeep sales were actually up one percent.
General Motors knocked it out of the park with a 6% sales increase (GM has been the top selling brand in the United States for 60 years except for one year during Covid)
Ford and Lincoln up 6%
Tesla down 9%
Toyota Lexus up 3.7%
Honda up 1/2%
(Btw Honda just announced today its latest quarter profits fell 60%. That is not a misprint. Honda states, they have problems and need to restructure.)
I do have to say at the insane prices of some of these vehicles they should be bulletproof. However, there’s more problems with engines and transmissions and recalls that I can ever remember. Electric vehicles seem to have their issues too. The only thing is what I would think is the most reliable brand Tesla in the EV department still not helping sales.
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If you look up what percent of GM vehicles sold in the US in 2025 were EVs... it's 6%... Exactly how much they increased overall sales. That's about 170K vehicles. It will be interesting what 2026 numbers are.
While Tesla US sales declined by 44K vehicles from 2024 to 2025.
Meanwhile Honda moved 40K Prologues (a GM product) in 2025. I'm not saying everyone who replaced their Tesla with something else got a Prologue or another GM product... I can tell you based on being in Prologue Facebook groups that many people with Prologues are first time EV owners. But there are some former Tesla owners.
What's interesting is... if the Prologue had not existed, would they have got a Honda CR-V instead, a Chevy Blazer EV, or a Tesla Model Y? We don't really know. But if we add Prologue to the GM numbers, GM grew EV sales 5x of what Tesla lost.
But by the numbers it's still crazy how many more EVs Tesla sells total. Tesla moved 600K cars in 2025 while GM moved about 210K EVs total in 2025. That's... 1/3 as many. Tesla is doing OK.
I don't think that is because Teslas are bad. Because they aren't. But there's just competition now.
In 2020, 80% of fully electric cars sold in the US were Teslas.
In 2025, it was about 46%. Almost half. Sure, Tesla offers a better ownership experience in many ways - order the car from the website or app from your couch without haggling, great mobile app, phone as a key, etc. But many people either don't care about that stuff or don't even know how convenient and awesome that stuff is because Tesla doesn't really do advertising the traditional way. So if you're just looking for "mainstream electric 2 row SUV" the Model Y isn't the only choice. Equinox EV, Blazer EV, Prologue, Mach-E, Ioniq 5, EV6, Toyota BZ, Subaru Solterra, etc. And that's the first few off the top of my head. It used to be simple, if you want an EV, you get a Tesla. If you want a gas car, you don't get a Tesla.
But once Tesla FSD Unsupervised is out, I think Tesla will again be unique and their marketshare will increase again. No other car will be able to drive you point A to point B while you are drunk, asleep, or working on your laptop. Heck, if we look at drivers over 85 years old, that's just over 4 million people. And one of the best use cases for self-driving cars are the elderly.
That's why they don't care about ditching the S/X and the 3/Y while getting refreshes and minor improvements are pretty stale. Once you again have something that no other automaker has, those things don't really matter that much.
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Unsupervised FSD is vaporware. It'll be out when the Roadster comes out. The problem is that autonomous driving either works, or it doesn't. There is no 95% case, because that 5% can result in a lot of deaths. Tesla could get to 99% and that's still not good enough to market it as a Level 5 driving system. Elon really needs to just stop talking about it already.
Have you taken a Waymo? Have you taken a Tesla Robotaxi?
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I have ridden in a Waymo, but not a Robotaxi.
OK. Well vehicle autonomy is the future and whoever can get it in a reasonably priced mainstream vehicle first will win A LOT of sales VERY quickly. I'm not even talking about the whole Robotaxi/transportation as a service side of things.
Why bother spending a bunch of money to redesign a vehicle to get a few more sales in a very competitive market where people are cross-shopping an Equinox EV and a Model Y when you can make a groundbreaking product that has no competition. Every dollar you spend on changing how the car looks or adding a few little things here and there is not going to matter when it's "car you must drive" vs "car that drives you in any condition." People will be OK with a boring looking, amorphous blob with a bland interior when they can fall asleep in the backseat or go to the airport in their comfortable nice personal vehicle and then have the car drive itself home instead of having to take an Uber for $200 with some driver that doesn't speak English in a Corolla with 600,000 miles on it.
It would be interesting to see why these only stick to certain areas? I think they still need help often from a remote human? And maybe they have those areas modelled and stored in the vehicle, as its not really smart enough to drive itself in a new area?
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That's easy. Safety.
Most people don't trust autonomous vehicles. The payoff from widening the operational area is less than the payoff from ensuring the vehicles are operating safety in regions where they have high utilization. As these vehicles are more broadly deployed, an incident may not just impact a specific geographic region. It can adversely impact operations elsewhere.
As an example, look at Cruise Automation. Their cover up of a single incident arguably took down the entire operation. Imagine if they had been deployed nationwide and that incident happened. Mind you, much of the opprobrium was directed at how they communicated the facts of the incident. That's a lot of capital and investment up in smoke. It's like flying. When you have issues with specific aircraft models, the entire fleet can be impacted.
I just wanted to say I read your post and respect it.
Just like every year until the numbers come out, everything is speculation. So far for 90 years GM has held the lead.
The American public has rejected electric vehicles as a majority. Tesla would be doing better today if they also had a gasoline burning vehicle, but they don’t.
Only time will tell which way the public goes however it’s not all or nothing. Gasoline and electric vehicles are here to stay. But gasoline will be the majority for now and all our lifetimes.
Comparing General Motors to Tesla is disingenuous. Tesla went after the electric market GM succeeded in the gasoline market.
It took Tesla 13 years to gain some respectability, and actually turn a profit.
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Registrations, maybe.
But if you mean in sales... I predict this won't age well. We need some sort of annual check. I think the curve will go polynomial in the next five years.
Time will tell
Alright, back on topic. Got a call on Friday from the dealer. The parts are in and the truck should be ready for pickup by Thursday of this upcoming week. Assuming that it is picked up on Feb 19th, that’ll be 41 days in the shop for these repairs and 44 days total out of my 4 months of ownership. I still have 14 months of lemon law coverage remaining so my wife and I have decided that if it has anymore major issues, we are going to serve notice which starts GM’s final 15 day window to correct all issues.
I’ll update this thread after I pick up the truck.
I’ll update this thread after I pick up the truck.
An update. The high voltage heating circuit issue has been correct but the dealer was doing their multipoint inspection before send it on its way and now it has a tail lamp out and from the sounds of it, the entire assembly has to be replaced.
The earliest they expect to have an answer about when it will be ready is now Monday. Today is day 45 out of service.
I’m calling GM customer service tonight to request buyback without going the nuclear/state lemon law route.
The earliest they expect to have an answer about when it will be ready is now Monday. Today is day 45 out of service.
I’m calling GM customer service tonight to request buyback without going the nuclear/state lemon law route.
wemay
Site Donor 2023
Sorry to read of your troubles with that brand new truck. Hopefully the dealership does right by you. I, for one, would have trouble believing nothing else will crop up.
The dealership has been solid. No “we cannot recreate” or any other BS. In fact, two of these issues have cropped up while it has been in their possession and they have been great about trying to address the issues quickly.
Their general manager is the one that actually suggested that I attempt the GM EV Concierge buyback route. It preserves my lemon law rights but it permits the dealer to stay in the conversation. He said that once I go official lemon law, it’s taken out of the dealer’s hands and right over to the attorneys and a mediator. I still have around 13.5 months of lemon law coverage.
Just keep in mind the GM concierge buyback route is there so to cost General Motors less money and prestige.
Nothing wrong with that if you get your way, but if you’re set on a replacement limit the amount of time you give GM before going lemon law.
I could be wrong, but I suspect GM system is there to wear down possible lemon law consumers to the point that they give up or settle for a less than satisfactory deal, preserving profits and or bad press for GM
Like I said, I could be wrong, but let’s face it. They’re a corporation and not your friend.
