GM created a CRO role within its energy subsidiary to drive rapid growth

The No. 1 US automaker is betting that the future of transportation won’t be defined by EVs alone, but by a host of complementary technologies that will make electrification an appealing proposition for consumers and power companies alike.

To that end, General Motors in 2022 launched a wholly owned subsidiary called GM Energy, which is responsible for EV charging, home energy storage, and vehicle-to-home solutions. GM Energy sells products like bidirectional EV chargers and stationary home energy battery storage units. The unit is home to GM’s only person with the title of chief revenue officer, Aseem Kapur, who joined the company in 2022 after a nearly 20-year career at New York City’s primary utility provider, Con Edison.

Morning Brew recently caught up with Kapur to discuss GM Energy’s latest announcements as the business looks to take advantage of the AI-driven growth in electricity demand in the US. GM, in partnership with utilities like PG&E in California and DTE in Michigan, aims to advance vehicle-to-grid tech that enables EV drivers to send power back to the grid, and is developing next-gen sodium-ion batteries for grid-scale energy storage. Amid a slowdown in demand for EVs, automakers increasingly are investing in energy storage to generate new revenue, use the factory capacity previously slated for EV batteries, and ease their customers’ transition to EVs.

Today, GM has more than 250,000 EVs on US roads that are capable of bidirectional charging, with plans to significantly expand that number in the years to come.

GM doesn’t break out GM Energy’s financials, but Kapur said his team is laser-focused on quickly boosting the unit’s revenue multiplier. GM Energy’s VP previously told us that through most of 2025, the business saw 30% MoM revenue growth and a 5x increase in charging and energy product sales. About 70% of GM EV purchases also include a GM energy product.

“The velocity at which we’re able to deploy capital and also create revenue” has led to “4x to 5x growth just over the course of the last two years,” Kapur said.

“What we found is that…people are more worried about their outages, people care about their energy bills more than they’ve ever cared about [them], and then this opportunity is going to only increase over time because of the way there’s demand on the grid,” he added. “And then what they like about it is that it’s General Motors that’s getting behind it. It’s an established, trusted brand.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How do GM Energy’s latest initiatives tie into the broader revenue strategy?

Our goal at GM Energy is really around how we empower our customers into having an EV lifestyle that is conducive to their expectations. The way we achieve that is, we’ve got three major aspects to it: We’ve got public charging, where we have some large investments and partnerships with chargepoint operators like Pilot Flying J, EVgo, ChargePoint, and we have most recently announced that we are unifying that entire experience. We have announced Energy Pass as the brand under which customers can provide their information, their payment information, and then…over 70% of all DC fast-charging networks in the country will be accessible through Plug and Charge, or in some cases even auto charge. What that means is, you don’t have to use multiple apps for multiple payment platforms. You just use our app to be able to connect your vehicle to the charger and then it’ll automatically charge…It unifies that entire experience, removes the friction. So that’s the first aspect of it.

The second is around how we support our customers in partnership with our brands, at the dealerships, with home charging…What are the different pieces of hardware they need, whether it’s an adapter or a charger? And the intention there is to ensure that they have a charging solution at home, given that the majority of the time the vehicle is parked at home, and that’s where it’s most conducive to the customer in terms of convenience.

And then the home energy business is one of our most cutting-edge products that we’ve launched recently. It’s all about giving customers the optionality to use our EVs to be able to power their homes, and in the very near future be able to power the grid…We have the largest volume of EVs that are capable of bidirectional technology today in the market. We’ve got 12 EVs, at every price point…So we’ve got the breadth. And we also have the scale, in terms of, we’ve got about a quarter of a million vehicles out there that are capable of this tech, that with additional hardware you can purchase from us, you can use your EV to become a backup generator for the home…It’s repositioning the consumer to think about an EV as not only a mobility asset, but also an energy asset. And the opportunity is there for dual use, and that allows us to then create the immediate value around resilience.

The next opportunity is…that AI-driven electrification is driving significant demand for electricity in the United States…And batteries are becoming more and more relevant, because they are a cost-effective, flexible source…Any and everything we can do to help customers think about the fact that you made an investment in a car that can also serve as a backup energy asset, that’s the business that we’re trying to establish.

How do those elements—home charging, public charging, energy storage—feed into GM Energy’s revenue engine, and how do they support sustainable, scalable growth?

One is how we actually drive value with the consumer in terms of all the hardware they need. So all the charging hardware or energy hardware is the core value driver.

The second is around, how do we enable an ongoing services platform off that established base?...We have a series of partnerships with large energy companies, where we announced a proof of value pilot with PG&E. We’re doing one with DTE in Detroit, and the reason for that is that we are partnering with large utility companies in order to unlock the energy market that allows customers to get paid for sharing that energy back with the grid. And that is going to create a model in the future that allows for customers to be able to not only save money, but also make money, and that then allows for an ongoing services platform that we can build off this established hardware in customer garages.

And the reason why we’re doing this is, simply, one, it’s creating more value. It’s a win for the customer, a win for the grid…So the way that growth happens is in three major areas: One, everything starts with the car. You’ve got to get the EV in the customer’s garage, and the experience has to be seamless.

The second is making it simple and easy for them to be able to enroll in any energy company programs. Wherever you live, you can enroll in a program that allows you to get value, by either making money or saving money...It creates that sticky service platform…Energy Pass is the mechanism, because it allows you to support both your charging transactions as well as the energy transactions.

The third piece, which is really where we are laser-focused on, is the overall customer lifetime value, because it lowers our acquisition cost for the consumer. This technology will be in their garage for 10-plus years. We have a relationship that we establish with them that extends beyond the vehicle and allows us to have a brand presence with them, and then also our promise is that we are going to service that asset for them: We’re going to maintain that asset, we’ll honor the warranty, and everything that we do on the car side, we’re going to extend that to these assets…All of those three things are the revenue engine.

How do you balance driving value for GM, as well as customers and utilities?

It all starts with the customer. We’ve been laser-focused on the customer value proposition because our strength is our promise to the consumer. If we can fulfill that in a way that they trust us, that they can use the car as an energy asset—we make it easy for them to buy, easy to install, easy to use. That’s the core fundamental. We’ve got to get that right, because that’s table stakes. Once we have that, and the customer trusts us, we can then support them to enroll into utility programs and energy programs. And what energy companies are knocking on our door to understand is how much capacity you have and how reliable it is…If you’ve got the first layer of trust with the consumer, and they trust you to operate and manage that asset on your behalf. And the second is, we bring…that capacity or flexible electrons to the grid when they need it. That’s how we build trust with the energy companies. And then the third is around orchestration. We’ve got by far the best technology. We’ve got this cutting-edge, cyber-secure OnStar platform…We’re in very, very early stages of establishing our new product category and learning not only how to sell the hardware, service the hardware, but then also thread the ecosystem where we can bring energy companies, the dealer network, all of that has to come together.

GM doesn’t have a CRO, but GM Energy does. What’s your responsibility in terms of driving the top line for the business as a whole?

My responsibility on the top line is having ownership with our CFO on the top-line metrics that include our revenue plan, our cost structure, our variable profit, and the key is to make sure that every decision that we make, it has an outcome that leads into profitability, which is measured by variable profit. That’s just the mechanics of it.

The way that comes to fruition is, we have a vision document, we have a business plan, and then we have a set of strategic initiatives that we undertake…and measure ourselves to on an ongoing basis, and we have strategic KPIs and KSIs.

The good framework that this role affords is, we’re an independent LLC. We have a board within General Motors. We have to report out to the board on a monthly basis, and I am one of the officers amongst three other people, and the responsibility there is for outlining, here are the investments we’re making, here’s our progress toward the plan that we committed, and here are things that have changed. Here are things that are moving. And then also being accountable to a lot of the market forces changes. We’ve had policy implications, we’ve got trade headwinds, a lot of things that impact our business. And actually managing and aggregating that on a day-to-day basis or a planning basis is also part of that role, so having that framework with the independent board, having a structure, and then internally having a plan allows for that continuity.