GM's Next-Generation EV Platform Has 30% Less Wiring And 20% Less Battery

Tim Levin insideevs.com

• GM announced a fourth-generation EV platform in New York on Wednesday. 
• It will use lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) batteries that reduce costs. 
• The new EV architecture will result in EVs that are 15% lighter and 20% more energy efficient, GM said.  

General Motors is getting ready to roll out a fourth-generation EV architecture with big efficiency and computing-power gains, the company announced on Wednesday at its GM Forward event in New York City.

The automaker didn’t provide a firm timeline for when the new vehicles will roll out or which specific nameplates will use it. GM President Mark Reuss told the crowd that it will serve “a remarkable set of vehicles in several segments” and that the launch would happen “very shortly.” The company said the platform will underpin EVs in its “highest-volume” segments, which a spokesperson clarified means its crossover SUVs.

The announcement was light on concrete details about the new EV platform, but GM said the idea is to build cars that use fewer expensive batteries while still delivering the right amount of range. That could help it cut down on EV production costs and continue scaling up its electric efforts.

“We continue to develop our future EVs and work to reduce battery costs,” Reuss said on stage, noting that GM is a global company and EV sales are rising around the world. “And when the U.S. market is ready for EVs in large numbers, we will be there for them.”

All told, GM said the fourth-generation EVs allow for a 15% reduction in vehicle mass, 20% greater efficiency, 20% less battery capacity overall, and 25% better aerodynamic performance. The company has also reworked its drive units and power electronics to cut the number of parts inside of each motor by 40%.

At the core of GM’s new EV technology lie lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) batteries, a chemistry that GM says is cheaper than high-nickel cells while being 33% more energy-dense than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) ones.

“With that being unlocked, that changes everything,” Zach Walker, GM’s director of global EV architecture, told me. “When you talk about equivalent or more range for 20% less battery, which is a dominating [bill-of-materials] cost of the system, you can extrapolate what that means for the value proposition to us and really to the customer.”

The prismatic cells will be structurally integrated into vehicles, Walker said. He wouldn’t specify whether the cells will be installed in a cell-to-pack format or use some kind of module structure. But he said the new architecture will allow for better battery packaging that can, for example, make the vehicle lower and more aerodynamic.

It can do so without having to compromise the shape of the car. "Like, you can go slam a roof, and then the customer’s driving, like, a clown car," he said.

Crosstown rival Ford is also working on a blank-slate EV platform that it says will be more efficient and cheaper to produce than the technology that went into the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning. But it seems to be farther along. The $30,000 Fathom pickup is supposed to hit production late next year as the first model on the new Universal Electric Vehicle platform.

Like Ford, GM is also overhauling the electrical and computing architecture in its new EVs, trading dozens of discrete electronic control modules that control specific functions for a far more powerful and centralized system. In that way, it’s also following in the footsteps of Tesla and Rivian. In theory, that should allow for deeper over-the-air software updates, new features, and more centralized control over different parts of the vehicle.

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The new system uses a single Central Compute Unit located near the front of the vehicle to handle perception, propulsion, safety systems, and chassis controls. “This unified foundation provides the heavy computing power required to run both sophisticated in-cabin AI and autonomous driving simultaneously,” GM said in a press release.

The end result, GM said, is an electrical and compute architecture with 30% less wiring than current EVs (which saves complexity and weight), 40 times more processing power, and 50% faster cellular connectivity for video streaming and other features. The architecture hits streets in the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ and will be critical to delivering GM’s first eyes-off driving system, which debuts in that vehicle. It’ll also be found in the fourth-generation EVs and across GM’s gas-vehicle lineup, starting with pickup trucks and three-row SUVs.