In 2024, General Motors shut down production of the Chevy Malibu at its Fairfax plant in Kansas to make room for a battery-powered car. By 2027, that EV will be gone from Fairfax too, replaced by a gas-powered Chevy Equinox.
That round trip, from gasoline to battery and back, shows why American car buyers are walking into showrooms this fall and finding almost nothing new.
The industry has hit a dry spell for fresh designs
Automakers are expected to redesign just 9% of their lineups across the 2026 through 2028 model years, well under the 20-year average of 14%, according to analyst John Murphy. The Wall Street Journal found this week that new entries are sparser now than after the pandemic shutdowns or the 2007-09 auto crisis.
“We’re in a total stall for new products,” Murphy said.
The Journal traced the drought to one source. The billions carmakers poured into electric vehicles “diverted time and money from the types of models that buyers crave today, from hybrids to V8-powered trucks.”
Buyers never wanted EVs in the numbers Detroit planned for. Demand fell short, the paper said, then plunged when Washington ended subsidies and clean-air mandates last year. The world’s automakers have since scrapped or delayed dozens of EV models and booked more than $70 billion in charges, and GM’s share has climbed to $10.9 billion.
The writedowns were only the first bill. The second is arriving now, in lost years.
Fairfax went from gasoline to battery and back again
When GM announced the Malibu’s end in May 2024, the family sedan had sold 130,300 units the year before. GM spent about $390 million to retool Fairfax for the next-generation Bolt EV. In January 2025 the gas-powered Cadillac XT4 also left the plant to clear space for the Bolt.
The Bolt started rolling off the line in November 2025. Two months later, Electrek wrote that GM would bring in the gas Equinox in 2027 and the Buick Envision in 2028, and that once the Bolt run ends, “only internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles will be made at the facility.”
Two gas nameplates out, one EV in, and then the EV out. Each switch costs months of retooling and a new supply chain.
“This industry does not turn on a dime,” a Stellantis spokesman told the paper. Most of the new vehicles Detroit is now rushing to build won’t reach dealers before 2028.
Toyota sold what GM refused to build
While GM retooled, its competitors sold. The paper found that GM and Ford lost market share this year to Toyota, Honda and Hyundai, which “have more hybrids and lower-cost offerings.”
With gas near $4 a gallon, Toyota offers hybrids on more than 20 U.S. models, Bloomberg reported in June. GM “has only the electrified Corvette.”
“Consumers are interested in hybrids and GM can’t compete,” Cox Automotive senior economist Charlie Chesbrough told Bloomberg.
Mary Barra/PHOTO: Fortune Live Media (CC)
GM’s first plug-in hybrids aren’t due until 2027. When chair and CEO Mary Barra announced them in 2024, she explained they would help GM “comply with the more stringent fuel economy and tailpipe emission standards.” Regulators, not shoppers, set the timetable.
Cox analyst Erin Keating told the Journal that Detroit is missing out on hybrids and affordable models, segments where Asian rivals with broader lineups don’t have to wait for new arrivals to meet demand.
GM does earn one concession. Murphy’s industry number would be lower still without its redesign of its top-selling pickups. The trucks, which GM never abandoned, are the part of the lineup that works.
Cadillac dealers are stuck with a six-year-old flagship
The luxury brand shows the damage at its sharpest. In 2021, Cadillac’s then-global vice president Rory Harvey told CNBC, “We will not be selling ICE vehicles by 2030.” Cadillac stopped developing new gas-powered entries and began retiring the ones it had.
The three-row XT6 ended production in 2025. It had sold 20,225 units in 2024, while its electric replacement, the Vistiq, managed 7,879 in 2025, according to Jalopnik. In July, Cadillac said the gas XT6 would return.
Michael DiFeo, a New Jersey Cadillac dealer, told the Journal the Escalade hasn’t seen a major redesign in more than six years. His customers have noticed.
“I literally have people saying, ‘I am not leasing this car again. It’s the same car and the price keeps going up,'” DiFeo said.
Cox’s Keating described the bind for sellers: “You want to show the value of a price increase.” Without a new design, a dealer has nothing to show.
We said so in 2013, 2014 and 2024
NLPC has warned GM about this for more than a decade. In February 2013, we quoted Toyota vice chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada’s verdict that the electric vehicle “is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars.”
In January 2014, as Barra prepared to take the top job, we noted that Toyota’s Prius outsold GM’s Volt and Spark EV combined by about ten to one. “If Ms. Barra’s vision for GM truly centers on plug-in electric vehicles,” we wrote, “there will be a price to pay.” That February, Cadillac sold just 58 of its plug-in ELRs.
By 2015, even Volt champion Bob Lutz acknowledged that carmakers were “trying to recover what they’re losing at the other end with what I call compliance vehicles.” The people paying for those losses were buyers of conventional trucks and SUVs, the kind of customers DiFeo now hears complaining about higher prices on aging designs.
In 2024, we urged GM shareholders to have the board reconsider executive pay tied to the EV program, warning that the strategy “may not align with genuine market demand or economic viability.” The board opposed it.
GM tore out a car people bought to build one they wouldn’t buy. Next year, it tears that one out too.
