The Big Take
GM’s Mary Barra Has to Make a $35 Billion EV Bet Work in Trump’s America
The US automaker is up against tariffs, an oil-loving president and Elon Musk in the White House.
Mary Barra.
Photographer: Mackenzie Stroh
The Ultium Cells factory outside Nashville spans five football fields and runs 24-7, cranking out 5,000 finished battery cells an hour. The site and a sister plant in Ohio are co-owned by General Motors Co. and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution Ltd., and together they can make enough cells to build a new electric vehicle nearly every minute—most of them GM cars. Although the plants aren’t near full capacity, they already produce more cells than Tesla Inc. does in North America.