General Motors Co. has made close to $50 billion in adjusted net income over the past five years, while Tesla Inc. has lost close to $5 billion. Yet investors believe Elon Musk’s carmaker is the stock to own on the assumption that he has a nearly unassailable lead on all challengers when it comes to electric cars.
On Wednesday, GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra and the team from her skunk works in GM’s Technical Center north of Detroit made a case that they can catch up to and maybe even pass Tesla in the race to electrification. GM thinks it has a killer app in a battery platform that reduces the use of cobalt, one of the more expensive elements needed to store energy, and has a Lego-like structure that can be shrunk down or expanded to double as the chassis for anything from a compact Chevrolet Bolt hatchback to a 1,000-horsepower Hummer pickup.