General Motors to launch 30 electric vehicles by 2025
General Motors will be launching 30 electric vehicles globally by 2025, it has announced at the Barclays Global Automotive Conference. The slew of new models will come from across the group’s line-up of brands, and will ensure that there are EVs at “all price points for work, adventure, performance and family use,” it said. Of these 30 new EV models, more than 20 will be available in North America.
This will also see General Motors increase its spending on EVs from the initial US$20 billion (RM81.8 billion) planned before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, to US$27 billion (RM110.4 billion) through 2025, said GM chairman and CEO Mary Barra. This represents more than half of GM’s capital spending, and a similar proportion of its product development team will be dedicated to electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle programmes, said GM.
Development schedules for 12 new vehicle programmes have been expedited, including the Hummer EV, three more GMC Ultium variants including a pick-up, four Chevrolets including a pick-up and compact crossover, and four Cadillacs. Next in line to debut after the Hummer EV will be the Cadillac Lyriq, the brand’s first electric model. This, and the forthcoming Cadillac EV range are slated for debut in Q1 2022.
The increase in development spending also enables the speeding up of development processes for GM’s electric vehicles; the Hummer EV‘s original development time of 50 months has been shortened to 26 months, and is now the benchmark for the group.
The group has begun testing its second-generation Ultium battery chemistry, which it says will have twice the energy density at less than half the cost of present-day batteries. This will use low-cobalt chemistry, and be configurable for large-format, pouch-style cells that can be stacked horizontally or vertically, it said earlier this year.
These are designed for Level 2 and DC fast charging, with 400-volt battery packs capable of charging rates up to 200 kW, and larger setups for trucks will use 800-volt pack supporting up to 350 kW. Further afield in EV development, GM will continue to explore third-party licensing for its Ultium EV architecture, batteries and drive systems, including the Hydrotec fuel cell technology co-developed with Honda.
General Motors will also be hiring 3,000 additional electrical systems, infotainment software and controls engineers in its new, fast-tracked timeline, in addition to more developers for Java, Android, iOS and other platforms, it said.
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