General Motors President says 'the ICE age is not over' amid shift to EVs

General Motors is set to rapidly ramp up its electric car production in North America from about 50,000 this year to one million in 2025, but it is not parking its internal combustion engine cars and trucks just yet.

"The ICE age is not over," GM President Mark Reuss told FOX Business in an exclusive interview ahead of the company’s investor day presentation in New York City.

"We’re not going to abandon our internal combustion engine segments," Reuss said.

"We’ve got truck leadership with GMC and Chevrolet. We’ve got it across our midsize trucks, our full-size trucks and then beyond."

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Notable new ICE models launching next year include all-new midsize pickups, updated heavy-duty trucks and the Chevrolet Trax compact SUV, which is set to be the lowest-priced model sold by an American brand at $21,495.

Sales of the profitable pickups and SUVs will support the $35 billion GM is planning to spend on electric vehicles and autonomous driving technology through 2025.

"We’re positioned well, not only to fund our future, but to add growth to those big high volume, high profit segments," Ruess said.

Ford CEO Jim Farley has made similar comments about his brand’s electrification strategy this year, and has gone as far as to spin off the automaker’s internal combustion business into separate division called Ford Blue.

GM is focused on transforming several plants to EV production for high volume models like the Silverado EV pickup and Equinox EV compact SUV, along with establishing its own in-house battery production at four factories, starting with a new plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that is now coming online.

"As we get that scale, and we pay for those investments we’ve made … then we begin to make money on EVs and the margin structure becomes very good."

Reuss said those profits will start coming from the EV projects in 2025, and that the company’s plans do not even factor in the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act that restored its vehicles' eligibility for federal tax credits, which had expired under the old plan.

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Even then though, battery-powered vehicles will only account for about a third of GM’s sales in the U.S., and there is no firm timeline for when they will start outselling their ICE counterparts for good.

"It’s very important for our transformation to have both, Reuss said.

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"We have tremendous flexibility as an OEM that makes both, so we’ll do what the market says."