 We welcome you all to the special think tech lecture program and we welcome Shirley Daniel, director of the Pacific Asian Management Institute, PAMI organizer and convener of the program. And every year, PAMI presents the Paul Chung Memorial webinar lecture. The speaker this year is Tom Cooney of General Motors. His talk is entitled Transformations in Transportation, exciting innovations in the auto industry. Now, Shirley, would you be so kind as to tell us about PAMI, what it is and what it does. Thank you and Aloha Jay and everyone. The Pacific Asian Management Institute PAMI was founded over 40 years ago in 1977 by Dr Chung, who was an economics professor at the UH Manoa Shidler College of Business. Dr Chung foresaw many of the changes in global economic conditions and business and realized how important the Asia Pacific region was going to be to the US and to Hawaii. Sadly, Dr Chung was only in his 50s when he passed away over 30 years ago on August 28 1985. Dr Chung was born in Korea and came to the US for his education, earning his PhD from the Michigan State University. After becoming a professor at the University of Hawaii, Dr Chung developed the early PAMI programs around the concept of planned interaction between students, managers, and faculty from throughout the world. He invited a who's who of international business scholars from both sides of the Pacific to participate in the PAMI programs. The Dr Chung Memorial Lecture is a highlight of our PAMI program and is made possible by the generosity of Mrs K Chung, who established the Dr NH Paul Chung Memorial Lecture Fund. Over the past 30 years, in addition to this lecture, Mrs Chung has also endowed scholarships and programs in the William S Richardson School of Law, the Center for Korean Studies, and the Shidler College of Business. We thank Mrs Chung for her generous support of PAMI and the University of Hawaii. I'd also like to thank Jay Fidel and Think Tech Hawaii for helping us expand the tradition of our lecture through the Think Tech platform. Thank you Jay for your support of the University and PAMI. This year, our topic focuses on innovations in the auto industry, a particularly important topic since transportation is one of the most important factors in the national economy, and is one of the most important factors in Hawaii. As the world grapples with issues of climate change, electrification of vehicles and infrastructure needed for them will be a key element for Hawaii going forward. Thank you to all attendees for your continued support for our programs. We greatly appreciate your participation in the webinar today as we celebrate the life and work of Dr Chung. At this time, I'll turn it back to Jay to introduce our speaker, Mr Tom Cooney. Our speaker Tom Cooney is Vice President of Global Public Policy at General Motors. He oversees GM's international engagement and its partnerships with the US and foreign governments. All in support of GM's vision of carbon neutrality and an all electric future with zero admissions, zero crashes and zero congestion. In addition to these government relations duties, Tom worked on the GM Project 5 team that built and delivered 30,000 life-saving ventilators early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Before joining GM, Tom had a 25-year diplomatic career in the State Department and attained the Senior Foreign Service Rank of Minister Counselor. He was charged with affairs at the Embassy in Argentina and served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Argentina and Hong Kong. He had assignments in Beijing, Shanghai, Santiago, Washington, and was foreign policy advisor or a pay-com. As you'll see, as a result, Tom became a very diplomatic person. That said, I give you Tom Cooney, Vice President of Global Public Policy at General Motors, on transformations in transportation, something that will undoubtedly affect us all. I give you Tom Cooney. Tom? Hey, thank you, Jay. Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Shirley, as well. This is, I really appreciate this opportunity for multiple reasons. I have strong ties to Hawaii from my time when I was with pay-com, and that's when I fell in love with the islands. And so the opportunity to be here today and to talk with all of you is about what I'm very passionate about in the auto industry is fantastic. I also want to mention it's a great honor to be doing this with the Dr. Paul Chung lecture. You know, given that I work for General Motors, we have very strong ties to Korea. We have multiple factories, a big manufacturing footprint in Korea. I'll be there again for a visit in early October to visit with the new government. I work for international government relations and run that for General Motors, so I'm traveling throughout the world very heavily in the Asia Pacific. So it gives me a lot of opportunities to stop by Honolulu as well. As I go into the slides, there's going to be a lot of GM stuff. There's going to be a lot of GM pictures and things like that. I'm not trying to sell anybody any cars today. It's just a topic that I know best, and I think that what General Motors is doing is really emblematic of what is going on across the whole industry, lots of different automakers. So I'll talk about General Motors. I'll talk a little bit about other companies as well, but I'm really using us as an example of what's happening. And that's really significant because GM is a company that's 114 years old. When you think of Chevrolet and Cadillac and GMC and Buick, you're thinking of these great gas vehicles of the past. All of that is changing, and that is what attracted me to move from a long career in diplomacy to General Motors. So let's get going. So I chose this first slide because if you remember the Hummer 10, 15 years ago, the original Hummer, it was this big, huge beast, not good on gas at all, quite the gas guzzler. And so that is the, as you look at it, that's the left side of the picture, the old traditional Hummer. On the right side is the brand new one, all electric. I mean, it couldn't be more different. It looks similar. It's still the same kind of rugged vehicle, but it's all electric, zero emissions. It is a sea change, and this is kind of emblematic of what's happening in the industry. So, you know, it's a great vehicle and goes zero to 60 in three seconds and very quiet and uses no gas and carbon emissions free. So where is all this coming from? You know, just to put this in context, why is this happening now? There's a variety of factors. The biggest factor is, is the, you know, we're all more concerned with, you know, with the climate and with the increasing emissions and what can we do about it? We've got the Paris supports, various national commitments. So companies like GM want to do their part. We're making massive investments in this technology, massive. So it's, you know, it's not depending on government subsidies. It's our own, you know, skin in the game, if you will, $35 billion of investments. Volkswagen Group making very similar investments. Ford of others. Tesla obviously is all electric from the very beginning. So companies are lagging behind taking a wait and see approach, but we are, you know, we're, we're, we're all in. So the, a lot of national governments are also saying it's time we need to make this switch. For example, in California, as of 2035 in California, nobody can sell any new gas, internal combustion engine vehicles or what we call ICE vehicles, the traditional vehicles. You can't buy a new one in California. You'll be able after 2035, you'll be able to continue to drive your old one, you can't buy a new one. And then there's 15 other US states who follow California and they'll do the same thing. And there's countries around the world. The UK has a similar rule by 2035, British Columbia, Quebec, in Canada, Chile, all by 2035. Some are saying 2040, but this is, this is moving along. Other things that are happening is, is autos are no longer going to be just simply the vehicle that gets you from place to place. They're becoming like rolling iPhones at this point. The, all of our new vehicles will come with what's called an altify system. So your traditional infotainment. This is going to change as you know it. And you've probably seen that in Tesla vehicles and others. So the amount of data that's rolling across vehicles creates a lot of new issues for privacy, but it also creates new revenue streams as well. Automakers like General Motors are becoming tech companies. It is, it's not just, you know, building the four wheels and the steering wheel and going from point A to point B. So the, you know, where, where, where did we get there? What has to happen? First of all, to make EVs affordable, the cost of the battery has to come down, and it has been coming down. And that's where, you know, when I talked about $35 billion of investment, a lot of that is in battery technology. So bring changing, experimenting with the battery chemistry with the lithium and nickel, the cobalt and manganese, the graphite that goes into the battery. Everybody's got their secret formula. Everybody's got their, their mix. And nobody's got it perfect yet. And so there's everybody's working on that trying to make batteries more dense. And energy efficient, and also bringing the cost of the batteries down. And also working in very environmentally sustainable ways as well. And I can talk more about that as well. We need smart and effective public policy. We're seeing a lot of that. We've had a lot of efforts around the world from various governments just recently in the United States. The inflation reduction act includes massive investments in consumer purchase incentives. You know, consumers have to be, have to be convinced and you have to give them financial incentives to make this kind of investment. So that is included in the inflation reduction act and also manufacturing production incentives. And the US government is using this as a way to try to keep manufacturing at home as our traditional gas engine factories transform into electric factories. Governments around the world are doing the same thing, offering the same kinds of investment incentives. It's a race to try to attract these, these factories. And you can see that in Korea. You can see it in China. You can see it in Europe as well. And then of course, there's the charging networks. It's just like back in the day, you know, 120 years ago when people were transforming from the horse and carriage into the gas vehicle. Well, what were they worried about back then? Where will I get gas? What if I run out of gas out in the countryside? So that is a long transformation process and you have to build up consumer confidence and that they can go and get the energy that they need, the charge that they need, and to do it quickly. That is the federal government is making a huge investment $7.5 billion in charging networks across the United States. And companies like General Motors are also making their own investments and working with charging networks, creating joint ventures and trying to build this out to in order to reduce range anxiety. Just as a side note, all of GM vehicles going forward will have at least a minimum of 300 miles of range on a single full charge. 300 miles. So if you're in Hawaii, that's easy. You might be able to go all week without having to recharge. It depends on how much you're commuting around the island, but that's, you know, add a minimum and then bring a helmet night and charge it up again. And then of course, you know, if you pay for a bigger battery, then you'll have even more, even some of our vehicles can go up to 450 miles at their most deluxe premium value. And General Motors is we are becoming very ambitious. So we are going to be having completely electric zero emissions, light duty fleet by 2035. That's really not that far away. So 100% of our light duty fleet, which is about 95% of what we sell. And by 2040, we will be completely carbon neutral. So that means all of our facilities around the world also will be carbon neutral. And we're doing that through big investments in renewable energy for our factories, for example, and we're doing that, you know, everywhere across the world. So these are big, this is a big sea change for General Motors. This is a company that is, you know, I was a track, I'm originally from Detroit, and this is not the GM that I, you know, that I grew up with. So that's, and we're seeing these kinds of commitments from, from many other countries, companies around the world, again, some moving faster than others. And, you know, GM Volkswagen board really trying to move fast and hard into this space. This is, I've alluded to this already. I won't go into all of this in detail, but, you know, just the big numbers, $35 billion between now and 2025. So between now and next, well, I should say between 2020 and 2025, $35 billion going into electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle development down in the lower left where it says greater than 50% of product development. Last year was the first year when GM put more design and engineering investment into EVs than into traditional ICE, you know, internal combustion engine vehicles. That's huge, 114 year old company, and now more of the money is going into, into this direction. Let me also just say we're not a company that has hybrids. We don't have any hybrids we we used to, but we're all in on electric hybrid vehicles are good in the sense that they certainly are better than internal combustion engine vehicles. But there's still a combustion engine in that vehicle, and studies show that a lot of hybrid owners are still driving the vehicles on gas rather than using the electric portion. I've mentioned this a little bit that I think it's worth going into in a little bit more detail. The bipartisan infrastructure law that was passed last year is has $7.5 billion for EV charging infrastructure. So again, consumers have range anxiety, you know, gas stations are everywhere, but chargers seem to be hard to find. So this is we're going to see a major build out of charging infrastructure, kind of like going back to President Eisenhower the 1950s with the big federal interstate highway plan. This is this is analogous. This is a build out of charging infrastructure. We also have to make it the charging experience fast. So our technology now can get to an 80% charge in about 15 minutes. So if you if you stop somewhere and you, you know, go inside and you, you know, you're on a highway and you get a coke. You get a get a coffee inside in 15 minutes, your your vehicle can be charged up to 80% of capacity. So that's, you know, again, those rates continue to drop to move faster. And at the same time that the cost of the battery is dropping, which the battery is 40% of the cost of the vehicle. So if you can continue to drive down the cost of the battery, it will continue to make EVs more affordable. And then the inflation reduction act that just passed. These are huge investments. They some of the criteria in order to be able to produce vehicles that will be eligible for the $7500 consumer investment. Let me let me start there. For those who aren't aware, there will be a new $7500 incentive for consumer purchase if the vehicle meets several criteria in terms of where the battery minerals are coming from and where the batteries are assembled. And then final assembly needs to take place in North America. And so within the US MCA, the US, Mexico, Canada free trade agreement. So it's it's created a high bar Congress and the president created a purposely high bar because it wants to incentivize EV production and EV purchases, but also wants the production to be in the United States using critical minerals from the United States. Or from allied and partner countries. So we are shifting our supply chains. All companies are working to shift the supply chains as much as possible in order to qualify for these incentives as soon as possible. I can talk about that later if there's a question, but this is something that GM, my team and others got an early jump on and we're working with with lots of different companies and countries, including with, you know, thinking again of Dr. Paul Chung, we have great partnerships with a series of Korean companies, including LG energy and Costco chemical, working closely on battery production joint ventures and also the processing of the critical minerals that that goes into the battery cell packs. So, GM in Korea US and Korea, very, very important ties, or doing the same thing with a different company called SK innovation for their battery production. So, again, you know, another another US company, it's, you know, good examples of work together under the Korea US free trade agreement between between old allies. Of course, in China, General Motors has a huge footprint manufacturing footprint in China, by and large what we build in China is for China, it's not exported. And there we're also building batteries and building electric vehicles, and we're doing that with a Chinese partner called CATL. So, back to the topic of charging because this is first and foremost, you know that the vehicles are coming the products are coming. They're beautiful. They're great. They have, you know, long life. But again, it's the range anxiety and building out the past charging network. So I mentioned the the 7.5 billion that the US government is distributing to to the states. The Department of Energy is doing some of it directly but much of it is being given to the states to build out locally. But we're also making our own direct investments. This is, you know, this is a private and public sector challenge. And so we are working with a variety of companies, including one announcement, a company called pilot company, where we're putting $750 million of GM funding to charging networks across the country. I won't go into this too long. This is not a chemistry class. I feel like I've gone back to sometimes in this job, like I've gone back to high school chemistry. I mentioned, you know, so in the EV battery, the primary input materials are, as you can see on the left, left, lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, silicon and graphite. Automakers around the world and also other industries are in a race to secure as much of this material as possible from around the world. Also rare earths as well. These are not rare earths, but there are rare earths that are used in magnets in other parts of the of the drivetrain for the drive units for the vehicles. So we are working with Korean companies, Australian companies, Canadian companies to secure supplies. And we've done so we feel very confident in our in our work so far. But of course we're building we're dealing with a lot of external shocks as well, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine drove up the cost of nickel dramatically because nickel was a key Russia was a key source of nickel. So, you know, we're seeing supply supply chain shocks around the world. A lot of the part of it we can go back to that slide. Thank you. Part of the, there's, there's the mining of the raw materials but then there's the processing. As I said, you know everybody says that you know all the all the minerals are in China. That's actually not true. All the processing is in China. And that started, you know, decades ago with the processing of batteries for consumer electronics, you know for Sony playstations and, and cameras and things like that. So the raw materials are really mined everywhere and we have some in the United States as well. Canada, like I said throughout the Americas, but processing them is is the key and China is has about 80% of that so it's never wise to to depend on on any one link in the chain. So, diversification of processing around the world is is important to do. And again, it's not going to be like China will be squeezed out of that market that industry for a long time and probably never because again we produce in China or China, but it's just creating diverse sources of the minerals in of the process minerals that's just good business. It's just period business one on one so that you're not, you know, fortunately where we were not dependent on Russian nickel, we saw those risks for forthcoming. And we started to make alternate arrangements, you know, over the course of the last year. You know, having diverse supplies is just good business all the way around. This is just an example of what General Motors is doing. Again, other companies making similar moves if they're if they're as aggressive on on electric as we are. There's some of the companies that we're working closely with LG Chem is our joint venture partner to build batteries we have for battery plants in the United States built with LG Chem under the name of Altium cells. So Altium cells, you can see there is a joint venture, and the first one just opened up and just started operating a month ago in Ohio, and several more are scheduled to open. POSCO chemical another Korean company. We are opening up a plant in Quebec, in Canada, together with POSCO to do the processing that I just talked about so they'll take raw materials from around the world and turn it into the cathode active material that ultimately goes into the cell packs at these battery plants like the one in Ohio so weird. That's just an example of the chain that we are in the process of building company like GM I can't speak for other companies but we are very unlikely to go down and become minors ourselves to actually go into such a vertical integration that we buy a mine in in nickel mine in Canada or you know a cobalt mine in in in Australia, battery recycling. This is extremely important. We don't want to build all these batteries and have them go into landfills. So every battery that we currently have, you know, we have a lot of Chevrolet bolts on the road, for example, everyone that comes back is is recycled or reused. There is, you know, a lot of so recycling. It is the technology has improved to the point where we can, you can break down an old battery. And then recycle those those minerals and use them again, these minerals are precious they have value so we want to use them again, put them back into the cam the cathode active material recycling process. So recycling is is critical. Another secondary form is we believe batteries can have a second life. So if a battery goes down to about 70% of its of its of its usage. From when it was in a vehicle, it still can can be a stationary source of power, it can be located outside of schools it can be located outside of factories. Take energy that's brought in from solar panels, for example, and then put it back into the back into the grid or put it back into that particular facility. So, you know, we strongly believe and we're working with regulators on how to ensure that batteries don't go into landfills. They're too valuable, and they have a alternate uses. These I'm going to go through really rapidly. Again, not selling any vehicles here. I just want to demonstrate. This is a wave of EVs coming from companies like General Motors. Right now on the road we have that Hummer I talked about there. We have the Chevrolet Bolt, which has been out there since 2017. That's older battery technology. Everything coming out now will have a Altium battery in it, which is much longer life, higher battery density, faster charging. So, these are vehicles that you'll start seeing next year they were just featured at the Detroit auto show. The only point I'll make about these vehicles. And in the next slide is that GM has long had a history, a philosophy of building a car for every purse and purpose that was a quote from the legendary CEO named Alfred Sloan. You know, the, you know, the MIT Sloan School of Business is named for him. We want to build for every price point. And this is really important to our diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as well. We're not just going to build luxury vehicles. So, if we go to the next slide here that you were just showing. Yeah, these, these are more expensive vehicles. These would not qualify for those new consumer purchase incentives, because Congress said a certain price point. So, a lot of the Teslas out there would not qualify a lot of the BMWs won't qualify. These two won't qualify either. The Hummer is a very expensive super truck. It can drive diagonal, actually. And then the Cadillac Lyric is a beautiful, beautiful vehicle. The price point there is $60,000. But on the previous slide, I showed you that we're coming out with vehicles. The electric equinox will be at the 30,000 range. The bolt is already below 30,000. So, we're trying to come out at a variety of price points and really have good value. Okay, and then here's a, here's the number one selling electric vehicle in all of China. This is, believe it or not, it is a GM joint venture with SAIC, which is Shanghai automotive GM and ruling, which is in Guangxi province. And Tesla sells the most EVs in China, the overall volume, but the number one selling model is the Hongguan Mini. People love it. It's very, very small. It's kind of like the size of a smart car and costs around $5,000. It can only go 100 miles on a single charge. But what people are buying it for is to be an urban getabout. So if you're running around Chengdu or China, Shanghai or Guangzhou, charge it once a day, charge it fast. And again, it's very customizable in terms of colors and things like that. This is just a little bit more about how we try to help customers with their charging network. So giving them big discounts or installing a fast charger at home. You can charge it off of your typical 120 volt plug that you might already have in your garage if you have a garage. That's fine, but it'll be slower or you can get a fast charger and GM and other companies are offering discounts to be able to install those. Which are 220 volt, much faster charging and to cut the cost. This is just really quick. When we talk about EVs, we're not just talking about passenger vehicles, but also delivery vehicles. So these FedEx and Amazon trucks, they are all going to be going electric. We launched a brand new brand called Bright Drop that you'll start seeing on the roads. FedEx, Walmart and Verizon are all early customers. So these are all electric and they come with electric vertical pallets like storage lockers inside that are also electric propelled and will make delivery much easier and package tracking much easier. Autonomous vehicles really quickly about this. They're not, they're not futuristic. They're actually here. We have autonomous vehicles, fully autonomous that are operating and actually charging for fares in San Francisco now. So if you go to San Francisco, cruise is what our autonomous vehicle subsidiary is called. You can actually get an autonomous vehicle ride and you can check YouTube and it's really happening. They're in limited hours, you know, they're rolling out slowly. So it's more like in the evening hours, they're only cleared to go up to 35 miles per hour. But they're fantastic. They've actually been operating there for eight or nine years in testing and we received approval just this year, the first company to be approved to operate. And then the other photo on that slide is a brand new fully autonomous vehicle called the origin on the right side. There's no steering wheel. There's no driver position. There's no brake pedal. There's two rows facing each other and what we call campfire seating. That's not futuristic either. That is actually going to roll out in Dubai, which really wants to be the first country in the world to have this kind of service. By the end of 2023, we'll begin a robo taxi service using the cruise origin that vehicle there in Dubai. So, thank you, Jay. And now we'll give it give it back to you. Obviously, I'm very excited about all these, all these things that we're doing and we're, we have a lot of challenges and we're trying to be ambidextrous in the sense of we're still producing great, you know, gas vehicles, all these automakers. But at the same time, we're going through the transformation to EVs. Now, thank you very much, Tom. Great remarks and you're right. It's very exciting. And, you know, it may be even more exciting than we think you talk about self driving in Dubai, if that's successful. The world will see and note. And gee whiz, it won't be very long before everybody wants one every community, every organization, every driver. So, you know, you might be able to excite the world in such a way so that things move even faster than we can imagine. So we have some questions for you, Tom, Shirley and I have both written up some questions and all the moderator questions, if you will, and this is an amalgam of all of that. The first question is, you know, you may have heard this before, as GM goes, so goes the nation. They don't say that about any other car company. So what what you're portraying is a picture of activity, admirable and inevitably altruistic, but this is a, you know, a capital corporation. We have to be mindful of GM's bottom line. Suffice to say in the world today, we all of us want GM to succeed in this initiative. But we realize the risk as capital investment, huge capital investors retooling and in the car company retooling means a lot. So yes, it sounds like there's altruism, but there's also going to be a profit motive here too. And I guess my question on that is, are you going to make money doing this, or is this such a risk that you can't say. Oh, yeah, I mean, that's a great question. It is altruistic in the sense that it's what the world needs. It's what the climate needs. It's what governments want and people's want. But it also absolutely, we think that this is a winning business model. We think that these are great vehicles that the market is ready for this move. And it's as we continue to drive down the cost of the of the battery, like I said, which is 40% of the vehicle. And with these technological advancements, yeah, we think that these will be successful, popular, profitable vehicles. We can't survive. We are publicly owned. We have shareholders. We have markets. So we absolutely have to have winning products that win market share. And without these investments, and if we wanted to just continue to do gas forever, that that would be risky. I mean, that would be that would be closing the doors eventually because governments are not tolerating that. Governments are actually the fuel economy corporate average fuel economy restrictions and the greenhouse gas emissions restrictions in California in British Columbia in Korea in Chile everywhere are getting stricter and stricter. If companies can't meet those, we have to pay penalties. So that's actually raising the cost of a gas vehicle for the automaker at the same. So that cost is going up. But at the same time, we have the cost of the battery coming down and for at least the next 10 years, consumer purchase incentives. So we think that this is the key period that we're that we're going into where the cost will meet, and the consumer purchase incentives will will prove to the customer that these are good value vehicles. Yes, and you when you talk about risk, and you talk about, you know, global expansion, which you're actively involved in right now. Talk about enhanced risk because you have geopolitical issues that we know in this world today that can erupt anywhere anytime we see it happening in the newspaper every day. So that adds to the risk and you know it's like this is the perfect storm for you, because you are a diplomat of a long career, and you understand how the United States is seen in other countries and continents and how people deal with technology and manufacturing global competition. My question to you is, you know, is that on a continuing basis are you satisfied that is a manageable risk, and is the expansion of GM a foreign policy asset. Is there a benefit here in other words when you go into a country and do well and sell to that country and develop technology and give that country, you know, a leadership position in this industry. Are you getting a benefit, not only for yourselves, but for the United States. Am I right. Yeah, I think that any company, whether it's GM or you know any company that is doing strong business with another country. The government appreciates that it's a bridge it's a commercial bridge between countries and you know from my days as a diplomat you know the core mission of a diplomat is to be a bridge builder. So facilitating business and trade between countries was always extremely important so when you look at the US career relationship I talked a little bit about you know the ties that we have, and I know that the US government considers that to be an asset. We have a strong presence, you know, in many countries around the world. And it's always, you know, it's always considered to be to be a very strong thing. And, and appreciated by, you know, and champs American chambers of commerce around the world as well. In terms of supply chain shocks and risk, you know, that's, that's my job, you know, we're supposed to see ahead. The best we can. It was a great, great quote somewhere that's, you know, forecasting is really hard, especially when it's about the future. But, you know, sometimes we, sometimes we get it right. Like I said, we saw increasing tensions arising. We weren't predicting the Ukraine invasion when it happened, but we were becoming less and less comfortable. So we started to build up buffer stocks of some of the raw materials coming from there. We didn't have a big business in Russia selling vehicles. We had actually sold our last plant in Russia a couple, a couple of years prior. You know, US China relations, you know, we are, we have a big presence in China. We're very important in China. China is very important to General Motors. North America is our home. It's our home market. Detroit is our headquarters. And so these kinds of, you know, it can create, when US and China have such rising geopolitical tensions, it can certainly create friction and risk that we need to manage. At the same time, I see companies like General Motors that are long investors in China as, you know, providing some glue in the relationship. And I think that's, that's important to have. So we have a, we maintain strong ties there and here. And that's, you know, part of what my job is, is to make sure that we, that we navigate well in that geopolitical environment. Yeah, we should never underestimate the value of industrial diplomacy. And I think that's a really important feature of the relationship. So in losing fossil fuel cars, which California and other states will undoubtedly follow and the federal government will follow in losing fossil fuel cars, where we're losing a diversity of fuels. You know, I mean, up to this point, you could have electric vehicles and you can have fossil fuel, both of them on the road. So if one gets weaker, then you go to the other and vice versa. If we go to electric vehicles as the standard, aren't we becoming dependent on one that is electricity and losing that diversity, whatever the value of it is. And could that be a problem going forward? For example, if the grid goes down in a part of the country, we won't have any electricity to run our EVs, right? Yeah, there's, you know, there's always concern about, you know, loss and gain whenever there's a technological revolution. And that's exactly what we're having right now. And so with that comes, with change comes fear, would we, you know, am I going to run out of charge? What if the grid goes down? But at the same time, you know, what are we gaining? We're gaining a world that is going to be cleaner, greener, much better for our children, protecting the climate. We're also gaining practical things like when the grid goes down, well, you've got sitting in your driveway, a massive battery that can power your house and can also plug back into the grid. You know, this is, this is actually, you know, something that you're, that your own car, your gas car couldn't do. So I think that we're gaining, they're also quieter. I mean, we'll end up having, you know, much, much less noise pollution as well. And so there's, there's always going to be a change when there's, you know, a little bit of fear of loss when we go through a big change. But, you know, again, back 120 years ago or so, we, we switched from the horse and buggy. So we lost the horse and buggy, but, you know, what did we gain as a result? Last thing I think I would say is there's also hydrogen fuel cell technology. Let me talk a little bit about that for a second. Hydrogen fuel cell technology is also something that General Motors is developing. We have a technology called hydro tech. We do not see what's the difference? Why, why, why hydrogen fuel cell vehicles versus EVs? The difference as we see it, not all companies agree on this, but as we see it is hydrogen fuel cells are great for applications when you need a lot of power over long periods of time. You know, it's no accident that, you know, Project Apollo used hydrogen to go to the moon. So we, Hydro tech, we've created these power cubes and we're working with Navistar, the big, you know, long range commercial trucking company to use Hydro, Hydro tech hydrogen fuel cell engines for long range trucking hauling, you know, heavy amounts. We're also working with a railroad company called Wobtech or railroad locomotives that would not run on, you know, diesel and everything else they run on, but would run on hydrogen. So these long haul, you know, heavy, heavy things also, you know, they can use be used as stationary power cubes next to ports, for example, you know, in marine areas, they can be used to charge electric vehicles. So there's a lot of different kinds of possibilities, but we don't see it as commercially viable to have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as passenger vehicles. You were talking before the show about the possibility of using hydrogen on the battlefield. Can you guess that? Well, there's, you know, there's different kinds of applications that are being used. GM has a brand new subsidiary called GM Defense. GM used it, you know, has a long history of, you know, as a military contractor as well. We've gotten away from that. So now there's a new subsidiary called GM Defense. It makes some trucks that are gas trucks for military use. But there's also experimentation going on with hydrogen fuel cells, because again, the hauling capacity, they're quiet, they can go long range, and those kinds of, those kinds of things are underway as well. Nothing in production, but just like I said, you know, locomotives, long distance trucking and, you know, potentially military applications. Okay, we have about 10 minutes left before we have to close. So we'll want to go to some of the questions that have come in from attendees, okay? And I'll read them. There are a few of them. I'll read them to you. The first one is it bugs me that our policies to promote e-vehicle ownership subsidize the purchase of expensive cars by wealthy people. Does it bother you? Or what should we do about it, if anything? Yeah, I mean, that I can see how that would bother you. And the, but under the terms of the Inflation Reduction Act that just passed, that actually changes. And let me look up really quick. There are income limits. There's two kinds of limits that apply to this going forward. So the old incentives go away and these new ones are coming in, but any sedan, electric sedan over 55,000 will not qualify. Any truck or SUV over 80,000 will not qualify for the incentive. So I mentioned that the GMC Hummer EV, it's over 80,000, at least this initial kind of deluxe one. And so that won't qualify. But there's also limits on AGI, you know, the adjusted gross income of the buyer. So Congress wrote in if there's a joint family income of over $300,000 annual AGI, then that buyer does not qualify. If the person's single, the limit is 150,000. So any single person making more than 150,000 also would not be able to qualify. So again, the, you know, I guess U.S. Congress and President Biden shares the view of this questioner. You know, by the way, just in the possibility that somebody may have a question that want to get hold of you, what's your website? What's the way to get hold of you, Tom? Oh, my email address is thomas.cuny.com. Okay, here's another question from an attendee. Since 2018, I have been following solar battery EVs. Today, we have so no Mercedes Benz, Lightyear Toyota, Hyundai, Joilong, and in the U.S. Airstream, travel trailers, and Tesla solar trailers. What are GM's plans for solar integrated EVs or stay plug-in charging only? So GM is investing heavily. Obviously, I talked about any EVs and autonomous vehicles and in charging networks, also in renewable energies. I'm not aware of any plans for solar EVs. So I guess I'm not following that as closely. But we are investing in renewable energies. For example, those cruise vehicles that are running around San Francisco, the autonomous vehicles, those are charged entirely on renewable energies. You know, we cruise as invested in wind energy and solar energy, and that's where that fleet gets all of its charging network from. I hope that helps the answer some way. But, you know, we are very concerned with the transformation of the entire grid. It's not enough just to have clean vehicles. You know, but where are the vehicles getting their energy from? Where are they being charged from? We're not in electric utility, but we're working with electric utilities and with renewable energy suppliers to increase renewable energy investments. And that's part of our carbon, fully carbon neutral pledge by 2040 as well. So it's not building in EV zero emissions end of story, but it's also where is the energy itself coming from from the grid. Here's a combination question for you, Tom. You know, everything considered everything you've been talking about, will we be paying more or less right now to buy, drive, operate, maintain electric vehicles and the necessary charging equipment. And to go along with that, here's a kind of personal question. And that is I'm in the market for a new car right now. Should I look for an EV, all things considered, or should I buy a conventional car and wait until the price, the technology, the infrastructure, the market and so on, or EVs is a little better, maybe in five years or six years from now. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, yeah, there are related questions. Again, we're, we're heavily focused on putting out vehicles EVs with great value at a lot of different price points so that Chevrolet Equinox that will. It's the 24 model year, but it's going to start appearing on the roads in the fall of 23. The Chevrolet Bolt, you know, is already less than 30,000 and the Chevrolet Bolt EUD are less than 30,000. So when, then when you add in the consumer purchase incentives that just passed, you know, these become very affordable vehicles. So the choice, so I think the price is we're almost at that equivalent point with with ice vehicles with the traditional gas engine vehicles because of the way the battery, the cost of the battery is coming down. So I can never advise anybody on their own personal car choice and whether it's GM or, you know, Ford or Honda Toyota. But I think I don't think anybody has to wait five or six years to look at buying an EV. I really don't. I think the the we're coming out with 30 EVs by 2025. So I showed you some of them, but there are 30 coming by 2025 and that's just us. So there's a lot of variety out there. The technology is fantastic. The charging ability continues to get faster and faster. I think it's entirely realistic. If you buy one now, I don't think you're an early adopter. You know, we've seen that with a lot of the people driving the Teslas and the Chevrolet Bolts and the Nissan Leaf that I see a number of those on the roads in Hawaii. Those were the early adopters. This is a proven technology and it's only getting better. So it's sort of like you want to wait for the iPhone. Two or three or four before you buy the iPhone or, you know, is it time to buy one that's that's going to be a personal choice. Time we're at the end of our program really, and it's time for you to give us a takeaway final remarks and integration of all these factors and vectors we've been talking about. I hope you will include in your takeaway, your perception of how this initiative by General Motors and other car companies doing electric vehicles will affect the United States economy, particularly given the IRA legislation. And how for that matter, it will affect the global economy. It's no small initiative. It's huge. So anyway, I just hope you covered that a little bit in your takeaway. But what message would you like to leave without viewers today. Sure. I mean, I can address that that, you know, that specific point about the US. So GM has made massive. Let me let me say this. I've been with GM for three years, and I do international. A lot of what I have done the projects I've been involved with have been actually with withdrawing GM from certain markets around the world and you know selling a few plants here in their traditional gas engine plants in order to make these massive investments in EV and AV technology. So there's been a massive reallocation of capital to these very, very ambitious goals. I've been a part of that kind of it's almost I feel like I'm pruning some of the branches of the withered branches of a tree in order to make the main trunk even healthier. And that would be our investments in the United States. So even just last December, we made the largest announcement in GM history, which is saying a lot 114 years old. $2.5 billion in a single announcement investment in the state of Michigan. That included one of the Altium battery cell plants I talked about and conversion of existing factories from ice to to EVs. That sort of focus on the United States and and also our partners in Canada and Mexico is is ongoing and is underway. At the same time, you know places like Korea and China I've talked about are extremely important to to General Motors so again talking a lot about General Motors here because that's who I work for but in terms of broader take away the whole industry. And it's here you've been hearing about EVs and I sometimes I feel like it's a long wind up, but the vehicles are coming there, they're going to be on the roads. The cost of gas vehicles is, like I said going to be start to go higher because government public policies are making it more expensive to build those gas consuming vehicles the greenhouse gas emissions. Restrictions are becoming becoming stricter and the fuel economy restrictions are becoming stricter and that's intentional because then as we add those technologies to those gas vehicles it makes that more expensive at the same time that we're driving down the cost of the EV. So, it's coming. You may be in your future buying, you know, maybe one more gas vehicle, but you're going to be considering EVs and and the charging networks and everything else that are coming along with it. Biggest takeaway statement I could make is what I said in the beginning, we're in that transformation that's akin to the horse and buggy era, moving to the gas vehicles, and 10 years from now, what the mix of vehicles that you see on the road is going to be vastly different. Gas vehicles will still be on the road 10 years from now, but the electric vehicles are not going to be the rarities. Let me let me stop there. And thank you very much, Jay. Great. Thank you Tom Tom Cooney for helping us understand and see into what's behind the screen and the future for us and the extraordinary prospects in store for national and global transportation it's going to be really interesting, really exciting, really great. Thank you so much to everyone for coming. And thanks to those who submitted questions for the discussion. Thanks to Shirley Daniel director of Pammy for setting this up. And thanks to Carol Mona Lee, and our intrepid think tech staff for supporting the program. We'll see you all next year for the next annual Memorial Paul Sean lecture. Stay tuned for more.