The All-Electric Cadillac Lyriq Is Here. What It Means for GM Stock.

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General Motors

began retail production of its all-electric luxury crossover vehicle, the Cadillac Lyriq, on Monday. The company has targeted 25,000 Lyriqs for 2022, according to reports.

Twenty-five thousand amounts to, perhaps, 1% of General Motors’ (ticker: GM) planned 2022 North American output. It’s a small figure, but the Lyriq can have a big impact on GM stock.

The Lyriq will help answer a lot of questions for investors and analysts. For starters, they want to know that GM can produce an EV on its so-called Ultium EV platform without any hiccups. GM recalled thousands of Chevy Bolt EVs in 2022 because of a battery defect tied to GM’s battery supplier

LG Chem

(051910.Korea).

The Lyriq also will demonstrate that GM can make higher-performing EVs that customers crave. A Bolt starts between $30,000 and $40,000 and has 200 horsepower. A Lyriq starts at about $60,000 and has about 340 horsepower. What’s more, the GMC Hummer EV that the company just started delivering starts north of $100,000 and has 1,000 horsepower.

The new EVs from GM are different vehicles altogether — they aren’t compliance cars designed to help the auto maker meet emission standards. They are designed to compete with any luxury vehicle made by any auto maker. Successful Lyriq and Hummer launches will go a long way toward convincing investors and analysts that GM is a serious EV player and can compete with the likes of

Tesla

(TSLA).

GM is hopeful demand will be strong. “GM President Mark Reuss indicated that the auto maker will continue to accelerate the rollout of the vehicle in order to meet the robust level of demand in the market, which would be enough to support over [200,000] units of annual production,” wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner in a note.

GM’s goal is to be selling 1 million EVs globally by 2026.

Rosner rates GM shares at Buy and has a $75 price target for the stock.

GM stock was up 0.9% in premarket trading Tuesday.

S&P 500
and

Dow Jones Industrial Average
futures rose 0.3% and 0.5%, respectively. Coming into Tuesday trading, GM shares have fallen about 25% year to date and were off about 35% from their 52-week high in January 2022 of more than $67 a share.

Write to Al Root at [email protected]