GM’s shares surged 61% over five years while Ford gained 6%, highlighting a stark EV-investment split

General Motors and Ford, two of the United States’ biggest automakers, have produced sharply different results for shareholders over the past five years, according to a recent comparison published by Yahoo Finance. The article says GM’s stock rose about 61% during that period, while Ford’s increased roughly 6%, despite both companies spending heavily to build electric vehicles and competing aggressively for market share.

The contrast is framed against the EV transition’s uneven financial toll. The post characterizes both firms as having poured billions into electric-vehicle efforts, then faced “brutal write-offs” as strategies, demand timing, and product execution collided. In that telling, the market’s response was not aligned with the level of spending alone, but with what investors believed each company was doing with those costs and risks.

The five-year stock “race” framing matters because it collapses multiple developments into one outcome: valuation changes driven by expectations for future earnings, cost control, and the credibility of each company’s vehicle roadmap. A 61% gain for GM versus a 6% gain for Ford suggests that investors perceived a materially different trajectory for margins, cash generation, or the ability to defend its position as the industry reorganized around electrification.

The article also points to a key theme in the broader auto sector: EV competition has been as much about execution discipline as it has been about new model launches. While both automakers made large bets, the stock gap implies that the market judged GM’s progress more favorably, or judged Ford’s progress more skeptically, over the same window.

Still, the comparison does not provide a granular breakdown of which specific products or financial decisions drove the divergence, nor does it spell out the valuation mechanics behind the move. It does not, for example, identify precise charges, the timing of those charges, or the extent to which each company’s EV strategy translated into operating performance versus balance-sheet restructuring. Readers looking for detail would need to consult each company’s filings and earnings history.

The story is also a reminder that “EV investment” alone does not guarantee a shared payoff. An automaker can spend significant dollars on battery platforms, powertrain engineering, manufacturing tooling, and software while investors focus on whether production costs come down, whether vehicles sell at profitable price points, and whether demand holds up against competing technologies and shifting incentives. Over five years, even small expectation changes can compound into large differences in stock performance.

From a company context perspective, the comparison places Ford and GM in the same broad category of legacy automakers trying to modernize at scale, but with different investor outcomes. That difference can reflect anything from product mix and regional competitiveness to supply-chain stability and capital spending efficiency, as well as how management communicated progress.

What to watch next is whether either company can turn its EV spending into consistently better results that the market can see and model. If future earnings show improving unit economics, tighter cost structures, and fewer disruptive charges, that would support the argument that GM’s stronger stock path was earned through measurable progress. Conversely, if Ford’s results remain pressured, the stock gap highlighted in the article could persist or widen. The comparison, however, is backward-looking and does not replace forward-looking disclosures in official reports.