GM's Trucks Are Paying for a Future in Which They May Drive Themselves

On October 20, General Motors told investors it had earned $3.3 billion in 3 months, and most of it came the way it always has: from big pickups. The next day, in New York, it laid out what it intends to do with that money.

GM didn't present its latest technology plans as one isolated battery announcement followed by a separate autonomous-driving announcement. The more consequential idea is that the battery, the computer and the driving system are becoming parts of the same product strategy. GM wants its next generation of electric vehicles to cost less to build, gain more capability through software and eventually handle portions of a highway trip without requiring the driver to watch the road. And for now, the trucks are paying for all of it.

The trucks pay the bills

GM's third quarter was a reminder of where its money comes from. Revenue rose 2.9% to $50.0 billion, and adjusted earnings before interest and taxes rose 21.6% to $4.1 billion, with North America alone contributing $3.6 billion at an 8.7% margin. Sales of its light-duty full-size pickups rose 9%. GM raised its forecast for automotive free cash flow this year to $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion, finished a $6 billion share buyback and approved a new one of $20 billion.

The shares still fell 6.8% that day. GM said it expects about $2 billion of commodity inflation this year, including memory chips and logistics, and tariff costs at the low end of $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion. Its finance chief, Paul Jacobson, warned that the fourth quarter would be seasonally weaker. GM has recorded $11.2 billion in charges since the second half of 2025 for scaling back its EV plans, and says the cash charges are now substantially completed. That's the backdrop for everything that follows: the company is funding a technology bet out of a truck business that is profitable but under pressure from costs.

Source: General Motors, third-quarter 2026 results and investor presentation, October 20, 2026; share move from AskTraders.

The battery

The battery claim is central. GM says the lithium manganese-rich, or LMR, cells in its fourth-generation EVs are designed to offer 33% more energy density than lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, the widely used low-cost chemistry, at a price comparable to LFP. The cells will come from Ultium Cells, GM's joint venture with LG Energy Solution in Spring Hill, Tennessee, with commercial production targeted for 2028. Higher energy density can mean more range from a battery of the same size, or similar range from a smaller and lighter pack. Either outcome matters, because the battery is still one of the largest costs in an EV.

GM pairs the cells with a new family of motors and power electronics that it says cuts the number of parts in each drive unit by 40%, and with the batteries and better aerodynamics it claims roughly 20% more range from every kilowatt-hour. Yet these are projected engineering advantages, not independently verified results from a showroom vehicle, and The Drive estimates that the first cars on the new platform would arrive around 2030.

One computer instead of dozens

GM is also consolidating computing that has traditionally been scattered among dozens of electronic control units. Its new central computer, built around NVIDIA's Thor chip, will handle propulsion, steering, braking, safety and infotainment. GM says it has 40 times the computing power of today's systems and needs 30% less wiring, and that it makes over-the-air updates, AI services and driver assistance easier to deploy across models, gasoline and electric. It debuts on the 2028 Escalade IQ and then moves to full-size trucks and SUVs. A centralized design also concentrates risk. If the core software is late or unreliable, the consequences can spread across an entire vehicle line instead of staying confined to one feature.

Eyes off, starting with a Cadillac

The attention-grabbing promise is eyes-off driving, first on the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ. GM first announced it a year ago, at its first GM Forward event, in October 2025. It will work on highways, under approved operating conditions, and it would be a meaningful step beyond today's hands-free Super Cruise, because the driver wouldn't be expected to watch the road while the system is operating. Sterling Anderson, GM's chief product officer, was careful about the label: GM isn't developing Level 3 autonomy, he said, but a system that can work without constant supervision. GM says the system will later reach its gasoline full-size light-duty pickups and SUVs, without naming a year. That matters more than the luxury debut. GM's full-size trucks and SUVs, the Silverado, Sierra, Tahoe and Yukon among them, are where its technology becomes culturally and commercially significant. And GM has a base to build on: it says Super Cruise has covered more than 1.2 billion hands-free miles in nearly 750,000 vehicles.

All figures are GM's own projections, not results from a production vehicle. Sources: GM, October 21, 2026, via The Drive and others.

The strongest question isn't whether GM's future sounds impressive. It's whether GM can make that future affordable, dependable and ordinary.

The real test

For buyers, the story isn't simply that a future pickup may drive itself. It's whether GM can use cheaper chemistry and shared computing to keep advanced technology from becoming another expensive option available only at the top of the range. GM hasn't given a year for eyes-off trucks and SUVs, and its recent software record makes execution the real test. It halted sales of the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV over software problems in December 2023, stopped funding its Cruise robotaxi business in December 2024, cut more than 1,000 software jobs in 2024 and has been through repeated changes of software leadership since. The strongest question for Carveyance, then, isn't whether GM's future sounds impressive. It's whether the company can make that future affordable, dependable and ordinary, and whether the trucks paying for it can keep doing so while costs rise.