I’ll bet their focus groups and buyer clinics told them exactly that.
GM has ignored buyer and dealer input before when doing major vehicle launches.
They ignored very negative clinic and focus group input in the early 1980’s when they launched the front wheel drive Cadillacs. (Because their “experts” told them oil prices would only go up).
In this case, their “experts” are telling them that the future is autonomous and EV. (Mary Barra has even said that)
https://www.ces.tech/articles/2021/january/mary-barra-paves-the-road-for-autonomous-mobility.aspx
It is a very bad idea to make global warming true believer the head of a car company. Mary Barra Is a global warming true believer.
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Good analysis, Reverend Wright. A 19th century reverend and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, had some things to say about trying to force feed consumers and citizens:
With such an ignorant and easily deceived majority, States would soon run to ruin were it not for limitations beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with.
Property will be protected. Corn will not grow, unless it is planted and manured. And the farmer will not plant or hoe it unless the chances are a hundred to one, that he will cut and harvest it.
Under any forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway. They exert their power, as surely as gravity forces apples to fall to the earth.
Likewise, the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force — if not overtly, then covertly; if not for the law, then against it; with right, or by might.