General Motors had a pretty good quarter if you don’t compare it to last year, but the company is looking ahead and expects to shake up the autonomous driving industry by 2028.
GM reported its first-quarter earnings results before the opening bell on Tuesday, April 28. Earnings were down, revenue was down, and global deliveries were down (specifically in North America, the U.S., China, and Asia Pacific), leading the automaker’s stock lower after its earnings release.
The company’s slight increase in EPS and EBIT guidance was not enough to offset the comps to last year’s first quarter.
The entire U.S. auto industry got a short-term boost last year after President Donald Trump introduced auto tariffs, as consumers flocked to dealerships to purchase vehicles before the tariffs took effect. Dealers helped themselves out by offering incentives to get even more customers to their lots.
But in 2026, General Motors saw U.S. net revenue drop to $36.4 billion in the quarter from $37.4 billion a year ago. Overall revenue was down $400 million to $43.6 billion, driven by lower EV sales volume. GM reported adjusted earnings of $3.70 per share versus $3.35 last year.
However, it wasn’t all bad news for the company. It is very excited about its autonomous vehicles and OnStar driver assistance technology. And it debuted its plan to take over the market from rivals like Tesla.
GM will bring level 3 autonomy to Cadillac by 2028
GM Super Cruise, the company’s autonomous answer to the competition, has reached the 1 billion miles driven mark, “helping pave the way for ‘eyes off/hands off’ technology on the Cadillac Escalade IQ in 2028,” GM said in its earnings deck.
The company has begun public road testing of next-gen Super Cruise on limited-access highways across California and Michigan, with plans to deploy more than 200 supervised development vehicles.
Tesla fans may think the 1 billion miles driven is cute since, as of Tuesday morning, April 28, Full Self-Driving (Supervised) has driven more than 8.6 billion miles. Still, GM says it is attempting to do something that has never been done with autonomous driving.
Related: General Motors stock analysts have mixed takes ahead of Q1 earnings
“We are doing something unique. Developing a system for personal vehicles that we can deploy on both ICE [traditional gas-powered] and EV,” the company said during the earnings call. So while most competitors are only putting the autonomous tech in their EVs, GM says it is bringing hands-free, eyes-off driving to ICE vehicles as well.
Super Cruise added 50,000 subscribers in the quarter, and GM says it’s on pace to add more than 1 million OnStar subs in 2026, with 30% of its user base choosing the premium option.
The company is banking on software-as-a-service as a major untapped growth driver in the near future.
General Motors details Q1 EV charges
While General Motors is focused on an autonomous future, it is still trying to get its electric vehicle program off the ground in the present.
Americans also rushed to dealerships to buy EVs last year before the $7,500 tax credit expired at the end of September.
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The rush pushed EV market share as high as 12%, according to some estimates last year. This year, GM expects EVs to account for just 6% of the market.
Despite the shrinking pond, GM is becoming a bigger fish. The company estimates its U.S. EV market share grew to 13% in Q1, up from 10% in December.
But the decline in EV sales isn’t necessarily a bad thing for GM at this point, since it loses money, lots of money, on every EV it sells.
GM recorded $7.6 billion in EV losses in the second half of 2025, including $4.6 billion in cash charges and $3 billion in non-cash. In the first quarter, it took another $1.1 billion in charges, driven mainly by contract cancellations and supplier commercial claims (though the company says it has already settled 90% of the expected total supplier claim costs and expects to settle the rest in the second quarter).
Of the total $5.6 billion cash charges recorded since the second half of 2025, $2.6 billion has been paid as of March 31. In April, it has already paid another $600 million for those charges.
Related: Ford maintains a big advantage over GM in one key area
