About Mark Reuss
General Motors President Mark Reuss gave an exclusive one-on-one tour of the GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, as the company celebrated the facility's 70th anniversary. Reuss highlighted the completion of a 10-year, $2 billion restoration of the campus, which he described as integrating engineers and designers in the same place to design vehicles rapidly. He also noted that the design center is capable of producing designs from all of GM's satellite studios around the world.
During the tour, Reuss announced that GM will donate $50 million to support STEM education in Southeast Michigan. He stated that the company will work with educational leaders to identify where the donation will be directed and that distribution of the gift will begin within the next year. Reuss, who has been with GM for approximately 40 years, also recalled that his late father, Lloyd Reuss, who served as GM president in the early 1990s, first wanted to work at GM after visiting the Tech Center as a boy.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Mark Reuss's recent appearances.
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Transcript (8 segments)
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Interviewer0:00
Tell me what a big deal that is for General Motors in particular and like your battery competitiveness across the world.
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Mark Reuss0:06
Yeah, I mean, you know, the struggle is always you don't see any real battery electric midsize trucks, for instance, right? And so why is that?
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Interviewer0:15
Yeah, not yet. Not yet. So why is that?
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Mark Reuss0:18
Well, if you think about it, the truck doesn't have enough packaging space to handle the battery packs needed for the duty cycle of the truck. So, do you sell a truck that's deficient on the duty cycle? Probably not in that segment. Probably not a great idea. Do you get something that has a better energy density at a lower cost that you don't have to package as much battery into the truck to get the duty cycle? Now, you're talking. And so, when you think about LMR and some of those, it doesn't have the inherent negatives of charge speed or ultimate capacity and energy density. Those are all trade-offs around these chemistries. And so I think when you start talking about that and the form factor that goes into it, you can take thousands of dollars out of those packs and offer people an incredible value with a duty cycle that's almost the same as a gasoline pickup truck.
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Interviewer1:12
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, you guys make some of the most pound-for-pound capable, probably the most capable electric trucks that you could buy. I think we both agree though that the big battery approach, like the 200 kilowatt hour approach, has multiple downsides. So is LMR the answer to that, or is it an answer to that? Where do you see the electric truck field going next?
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Mark Reuss1:34
Yeah, I think two years ago everybody said you can't do LMR, right? So this is, like you said, it's changing so fast. Is it a better solution today than what we're using today? Absolutely. Is it the answer? I don't think so. Not yet. I think there's more to go.
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Interviewer1:51
I would you elaborate on where you'd like to see that go, whether as a businessman or an engineer or both? What do you imagine is the future there?
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Mark Reuss1:59
Yeah, we get into 9,000 pound trucks, right? With a dual stack 24 mod pack on a pouch cell lithium cell. It weighs a lot now. It puts out a lot of power. I mean, you can do an Escalade IQ will do roughly 4 seconds 0 to 60 with that pack, which is pretty awesome for a 9,000 pound deal. But there's downsides to it. Like you said, anything that heavy is much heavier than anything else on the road. As an engineer, if I can get battery out of that truck and still get the duty cycle and the capability, as you mentioned, on those trucks, that's a big win.
