A Message from our Management

To Our Stakeholders:

In this report, General Motors speaks with confidence about all three critical measures of sustainability — environmental, social and economic. Our confidence is based on a new business model — one that very purposefully integrates sustainability into our operations and products.

We have learned that sustainability feeds our bottom line and that sustaining a profitable business is our ultimate responsibility.

We recognize that sustainability feeds our bottom line and that sustaining a profitable business is our ultimate responsibility. Profits enable reinvestment — in R&D to reimagine a car's DNA; in cleaner, more fuel-efficient technologies; in plants that better conserve resources; in improved vehicle safety; in job creation and stability; and in contributions to the communities in which we live and work.

We now have a business model that we believe will keep GM competitive, regardless of the economic environment, so that we can maintain a continuous cycle of reinvestment. Today, this model is working for GM. Our balance sheet is healthy. Our products are world class, winning in the marketplace and helping to transform our business.

Our business model also reveals that what we need to grow our business is remarkably aligned with what we need as a society — namely energy alternatives and advanced technologies that help reduce dependency on petroleum, improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions, as well as bold thinking about personal mobility in the 21st century. Our success as a business is dependent upon offering vehicles and services to solve these challenges while meeting the needs of our customers.

What Sustainability Requires

As daunting as these challenges may seem, we understand what is required to surmount them. It starts with dollars. In 2010, we invested $7 billion to research and develop advanced propulsion technologies, new lightweight materials and significantly more efficient manufacturing processes, just to name a few, and plan to continue investing billions. These investments are leading to vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt/Opel Ampera — our groundbreaking extended-range electric vehicles — that are not only green cars, but also great cars as evidenced by the Volt's receiving the 2011 Motor Trend Car of the Year award in the U.S. and achieving an outpouring of consumer enthusiasm across the globe.

The Volt success also underscores a couple of other important points. First, during a time when we were fighting for our life as a company and managing through a global economic downturn, we still managed to launch one of the most environmentally sound and transformational vehicles in history. This shows our team's ability to set priorities and stay focused. Second, the Volt reinforces our belief that real and lasting gains in fuel economy and emissions reduction ultimately come down to what the driver wants. If we offer fuel-efficient vehicles that people love to drive and that fit their lifestyle, they will be more interested in buying them. Our responsibility is to be customer-centric by introducing environmentally sound vehicles and services that will sell.

Our responsibility is to be customer-centric by introducing environmentally sound vehicles and services that will sell.

Sustainable solutions also require the right attitude. As we transform GM, we are striving to be open, transparent and collaborative. We are committed to working with all stakeholders — from policymakers, such as those in the U.S. with whom we have worked to achieve new groundbreaking fuel economy standards — to business partners, such as LG, with whom we have joined to push the envelope in electric vehicle development even more aggressively.

Finally, progress and change require commitment and, often, think-out-of-the-box creativity. On this front, we have a great track record to build upon. Our goal was to have half of our global manufacturing operations landfill-free by the end of 2010 by recycling, reusing or converting to energy all wastes from daily operations. We surpassed this goal and ended 2010 with more than half of our plants landfill-free. To put this in perspective, in 2010 we recycled or reused 2.5 million tons of waste materials at our manufacturing facilities worldwide — enough to fill 6.8 million extended-cab pick-up trucks that end-to-end would stretch around the world. During this period, we also made significant progress in the areas of water conservation, renewable energy use and wildlife habitat preservation. These gains have often come through creative thinking from the ground up — the type of thinking that led us to pick up the phone and offer to take oil-soaked booms used in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and recycle them into components for the Volt.

Best Cars, Best Company

Our 200,000-plus employees come to work every day determined to design, build and sell the world's best vehicles. And today, "world's best" means a vehicle that is responsive to the needs of our customers and responsible to the realities of the environment in which we operate.

This company has come a long way in a short time, but we know it's just the beginning. We need to, and will, do even better. This is the crux of the new GM: generating profitable growth that will allow us to improve what we make, how we make it, and the communities where we make it.

We have a chance to do so and we are taking full advantage of it on behalf of all our stakeholders. Stay tuned.

Sincerely,

Daniel F. Akerson
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer