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General Motors Outlines Aggressive Platform Plan For The Future

General Motors currently uses 26 global vehicle platforms around the world, but wants to pare them down to just four, the automaker announced on Wednesday. The move would “simplify the engineering and manufacturing of GM’s future cars and trucks, while enabling the company to deliver better-differentiated designs more quickly to customers around the world,” according to an Automotive News report.

“It’s something we’ve been working on for more than a couple years,” GM CEO Mary Barra told reporters on Wednesday. “We’ve done extensive benchmarking [and] there’s been tremendous progress made already.”

Her 2025 strategy sees four highly flexible modular platforms that will respectively cover front-wheel drive vehicles, rear-wheel-drive vehicles, crossovers, SUVs, and trucks. The strategy will save engineering, purchasing, and tooling costs, while allowing GM to tailor models to regional markets and specific sectors.

While the 10-year plan appears complex, GM may not have a choice. Says Morgan Stanley auto analyst Adam Jonas, “You have to do it just to survive.” In comparison, cross-town rival Ford Motor Company expects to be using just nine platforms by the end of 2025.

And it isn’t without risk either, as Volkswagen’s MQB “modular toolkit” has had technical and labor issues that have made its planned goals and reality two different things. Plus, some are skeptical that GM has the ability to implement such a massive plan, with one former GM executive saying, “You are not going to get from a large rear-wheel-drive Cadillac to a Volt, crossovers, large SUVs and full-size pickups with four architectures/platforms/component groups, call them what you will.”

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Comments

  1. I don’t think it’s possible to maintain so many properties of over 30 -40 different vehicles on only a handful of architectures. On top of that, 26 platforms currently being used? That’s a giant waste of money.

    Reply
  2. The 4:
    1. RWD-derived cars and Crossovers (Cadillacs, Camaro, Grand National; flexible for size)
    2. FWD cars and crossovers (Chevys, Buicks; very flexible for size)
    3. Trucks and SUVs (RWD/AWD)
    4. Corvette/Cadillac supercar

    This assumes that #3 can be adapted for midsize trucks like Colorado and Canyon.

    Reply
    1. Pretty much what it’ll boil down to.

      With such flexibility, all GM has to do is vary the height, length, wheelbase, track, width, ride height, front and rear subframes, and bodystyle. The body, of course, won’t be similar as that will still be the realm of the stylists.

      The whole “look alike, drive alike” nonsense is so far behind the times, it makes Lincoln look trendy. This is not like rebadging, and not like platform sharing.

      Reply
  3. Very ambitious goal. I don’t see them getting this low but I could see them getting down to 6 or 7. 26 is absurd, total waste of money. If they do get it down to 4 platforms, they will need to be highly flexible.

    Reply
  4. As we have seen GM has learned how to make much more flexible platforms of late. The key is working with the hard points and keeping them flexible.

    This is still platform sharing but it is a much better way of doing it. GM and others are now using new design and technology to make these platform more flexible and much more lighter yet stronger.

    Follow what Cadillac has done on the new Omega and it will show you the thinking they are following. Same for the D2XX.

    The cost of meeting regulations and development has driven this path they must follow and GM will be one that will be able to go it alone. Other smaller companies will have to look to others to share platforms. We have already seen this Mazda and we will see it with others.

    Shared parts, Weight Loss and strength is not a want here but a must have moving forward. GM will do well as we will see with the models we will see over the next few years.

    The Alpha was a advanced weight loss platform and I feel the Omega will be one step beyond that one.

    Reply

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