Car Talk

The North American auto industry of today is a jarring amalgam of contradictions. Cars and their makers are dismissed as anachronistic, smokestack relics of a blue-collar carbon age, yet they simultaneously represent a futuristic, AI-powered, green transportation ­utopia that humanity has pinned its very survival on. This disconnect reveals itself most forcefully in the current state of General Motors, the world’s largest corporation for most of the twentieth century. In 2018, this avatar of rust-belt manufacturing sold an astonishing 8.4 million vehicles and had global revenues of $147 billion (U.S.). Meanwhile, Tesla, Elon Musk’s epitome of automotive disruption, sold a grand total of 350,000 vehicles, with revenues of $18 billion (U.S.). Despite this yawning gap in sales and revenues, Tesla’s market capitalization of $61 billion far exceeds GM’s $55 billion.

Adding insult to injury, while it was once America’s largest and most important employer, GM recently...