Late last month, we reported on the news that General Motors’ military subsidiary, GM Defense, was awarded with the production contract to build, field, and sustain the U.S. Army’s new Infantry Squad Vehicle, or ISV, which is based on the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2. GM Defense announced that the $214.3 million contract was to procure the initial Army Procurement Objective of 649 units. Some quick math would suggest that each unit costs $330,200, but according to GM Defense President David Albritton, that’s not strictly accurate.
Albritton recently spoke to GM Authority Executive Editor Alex Luft in an interview, and stated that simply dividing the contract worth by the number of units is not an accurate method of determining unit price. He added that he was not at liberty to reveal the exact price of the vehicle, particularly because the contract was a contested contract win.
However, Albritton did say that the $214.3 million price also includes the appropriate support contract for the vehicles, for which GM has partnered with Ricardo Defense, which will provide support and “sustainment” for the vehicle.
As we covered previously, the GM ISV is based on the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize pickup truck, and is designed to quickly deploy up to nine soldiers onto the battlefield, including associated equipment. What’s more, the ISV is light enough to be sling loaded from a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, and small enough to fit inside a CH-47 Chinook helicopter.
According to chief engineer Mark Dickens, the new GM ISV is essentially a Colorado ZR2 “from the waist down,” which means it utilizes a majority of commercial off-the-shelf parts. Motivation is derived from the turbodiesel 2.8L I-4 LWN Duramax engine, which connects to a six-speed automatic transmission. As GM Authority reported last year, the diesel is tuned to produce 20 percent more power than the standard production model, as it is not constrained by emissions requirements
The production location for the new ISV has yet to be determined.
Stay tuned, as we have more info on the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2-based GM ISV headed down the pipeline. In the meantime, make sure to subscribe to GM Authority for more GM Defense news, Chevrolet Colorado news, Chevrolet news, and around-the-clock GM news coverage.
Comments
It doesn’t matter what the unit cost is for GM, it was a fixed contract for supply and service. DoD said this is our budget, these are the requirements, then it went through a competitive award process. I believe each were even given a budget to develop their presentation vehicle.
GM just so happened to have a rolling chassis that fit the bill where as someone like Oshkosh likely would need a full custom fab increasing their own build cost but not cost the Gov any more.
Further, the service contract may never need to be used fully so it’s a win there as well. And even if these vehicles need a lot of service through their life, i’d be there is a max in the contract, anything more would be drawn on a contingency
It’s not about and has never been about “the cost.” So you’re right, the cost does not matter and is irrelevant.
Instead, the topic at hand is the per unit price and associated margin. It represents a very interesting data point, and that is what we’re discussing here.
When it comes to government contracts things are done differently as the deals do cover support, development and actual build of the product in question. That is how you get high priced toilet seats and 100. Million dollars bombers.
The point here is that while they say this is 90% off the shelf parts they are not all Colorado shelf parts. Two this will be a somewhat hand assembled vehicle on a temporary line due to the volume. Ands they will have to support these limited models once in the field. None of this is cheap.
While using the rolling ZR2 chassis is a big help in lowering cost it is still not going to be cheap. As it is no each model is not going to cost #300k as listed price but they will cost that much once all cost are factored in. Companies ands government agencies do not like to have people see the total bill. Now if they build more cost will come down some as it will spread out the development cost. But if they keep with the present numbers it will be more expensive.
There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Just the way the system works.
Happy to learn that the USA government is buying from a USA company. Hope the production location is in the USA.