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GM CEO to meet with U.S. lawmakers over job cuts

WASHINGTON — General Motors Co Chief Executive Mary Barra plans to visit Capitol Hill next week to discuss the company's plans to halt production at five plants in North America next year and cut up to 15,000 jobs, two congressional aides said on Friday. GM has come under harsh criticism from lawmakers from both major political parties, and from President Donald Trump, since Monday when it announced the biggest restructuring for the U.S. No. 1 carmaker since its bankruptcy a decade ago. Barra is expected to meet with lawmakers from Michigan and Ohio, where GM plans to shutter three plants, as well as senior leaders in Congress. GM did not immediately comment. Barra has been calling lawmakers this week to explain the decision to end production. Trump has threatened to revoke subsidies for GM. The Detroit automaker plans to halt production next year at three assembly plants: the Lordstown small-car factory near Youngstown, Ohio; the Detroit-Hamtramck complex in Detroit; and the Oshawa, Ontario, assembly complex near Toronto. It will also stop building several models now assembled at those plants, including the Chevrolet Cruze, the Chevrolet Volt hybrid, the Cadillac CT6 and the Buick LaCrosse. Additionally, GM plans to shutter the Warren transmission plant outside Detroit and a plant that makes electric motors and drivetrains outside Baltimore, Maryland. The Cruze compact car will be discontinued in the U.S. market in 2019, although GM may continue building it in Mexico for other markets, Barra said. Reporting by David Shepardson. Related Video:

Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Over the past few months, we've noticed a number of cars and SUVs that have come incredibly close to earning one of the IIHS's highest accolades, the Top Safety Pick rating. They have great crash test scores and solid automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems. What trips them up is headlights. That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year. We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models. Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights. We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.

GM claims it's first to sell million 30+ mpg vehicles

As we continue to put together all the data for the year-end edition of By The Numbers, General Motors has announced that it sold more than a million vehicles in the US last year that achieved at least 30 miles per gallon on the highway. More impressively, GM managed this feat using multiple strategies including small vehicle size, turbocharged engines and hybrid or plug-in technologies across four brands (Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC) accounting for 13 separate models. This number will grow even more in 2013 thanks to cars like the all-electric Spark, the diesel Cruze, the range-extended Cadillac ELR and the Buick Encore compact CUV.
GM's small car sales were up 39 percent last year helping to attain this million-sales mark for 30-mpg models, and almost 40 percent of all GM sales consisted of cars with fuel-efficient I4 engines. In regards to more advanced means of improving fuel economy, GM says that it plans on having 500,000 vehicles with "some form of electrification" on the road by 2017.
Scroll down for the full list of GM's million 30+ mpg cars as well as an informative press release.