General Motors announced an investment of $22 million in the Spring Hill, Tennessee, plant for the powertrain departments to build 6.2-liter V8 engines with Dynamic Fuel Management technology.
The Thursday announcement brings the total amount of investment at the facility to over $2 billion since 2010. Spring Hill is GM’s largest North American production site and spans 7.1 million square feet on 2,000 acres of land. The latest investment follows a $300 million investment to build the recently revealed 2020 Cadillac XT6. The investment brought 200 new jobs to the facility. Total, 3,800 employees work at the facility.
“This investment will enable our Spring Hill team to continue building our award-winning engines enhanced with technology that will improve fuel efficiency and performance for our customers,” said GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra during a visit to the plant to meet with employees and community leaders to celebrate the new Cadillac XT6. “This investment reflects our commitment to vehicles and technologies our customers desire today and in the future.”
DFM is the replacement for active fuel management or AFM. The technology allows the V-8 engine to run on as few as one cylinder to save fuel and the technology features 17 different cylinder patterns to provide only enough power needed. Thus, the engine will sip fuel on a couple of cylinders around town, but all eight cylinders will be ready for combustion on freeway on-ramps.
Aside from the engines, Spring Hill assembles the Cadillac XT6, XT5, GMC Acadia, and Holden Acadia for Australia in right-hand drive. DFM is currently reserved for the V8 engines found in GM’s full-size trucks, the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra, but the latest investment likely foreshadows the 6.2-liter V8’s availability in the next-generation of GM’s full-size SUVs: the Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade.
Comments
Wait till the ECU takes a crap on one of these babies
Maybe that’s a sign they will make it more available in other trim levels *fingers crossed*
Our 2003 Suburban got 17.98mpg over 134,000 miles without that cylinder management hooha. Our 2007 Suburban had that cylinder management 5.3 v/8 and got about the same. Our 2013 Suburban is not doing any better. What they should do is come back with a hybrid that can kick in only under heavy acceleration because that’s where the greatest amount of fuel is used.