Back in 2017, GM Authority exclusively revealed that General Motors was planning to base all its future vehicles on four vehicle sets by 2025. The move, known internally as the Vehicle Set Strategy, or VSS, would come to represent a substantial migration from the automaker’s then-current 26 platforms.
The four sets would be VSS-F (for front-wheel drive cars), VSS-R (for rear-wheel drive cars), VSS-S (for crossovers) and VSS-T (for trucks and body-on-frame SUVs). In each case there would be subsets, to cater for different sizes of vehicles and classes, but essentially any vehicle using a particular set would be closely related to any other.
We are now halfway between 2017 and 2025, so what is happening with the strategy? It still exists, but it almost certainly won’t be as comprehensive as we had good reason to report four years ago. “At this point, VSS won‘t happen to the degree that we initially planned,” Tim Herrick, GM VP, global product programs, confirmed to GM Authority executive editor, Alex Luft, in a recent interview.
The reason for this is GM’s commitment to launching 30 new electric vehicles globally by 2025, announced by CEO Mary Barra during a Barclay’s conference in November of 2020. The work required to make this possible, plus the planned $27 billion investment, made it effectively impossible to continue with the vehicle set strategy as planned.
GM BT1 electric vehicle platform for large SUVs and pickup trucks
At the heart of the electric vehicle commitment is the new GM BEV3 platform. This architecture features a “skateboard-type” design, with the batteries contained within the vehicle’s wheelbase. It is so modular that it can be used for just about any conceivable future GM unibody EV, while larger electric trucks and SUVs – those we typically considered to be body-on-frame – will ride on the GM BT1 platform.
The highly-modular BEV3 platform is GM’s third-generation electric vehicle architecture
Even a company as large and profitable as General Motors would struggle to deliver on its broad electric vehicle plans at the same time as completing the massive undertaking involved that would have been VSS. In fact, GM Authority would go so far as to speculate that the last-ever traditional GM platform for ICE vehicles already exists today.
In support of this, consider the case of the upcoming 2023 Chevy Colorado and 2023 GMC Canyon midsize pickup trucks. Years ago, these were slated to ride on an all-new architecture known internally as GMT-32XX, which would also serve as the basis of a new GMC model rivaling the Jeep Wrangler and new Ford Bronco. But now, the next-generation Colorado and Canyon will in fact use an evolution of the current GMT 31XX platform, while the Wrangler and Bronco fighter was cancelled. The same appears to be taking place for the future Cadillac XT5, which will be overhauled on the existing C1 platform.
Since this has already happened twice, it will likely continue to take place on other projects and vehicles. In fact, all future GM ICE vehicles are likely to be based on platforms in existence today – a perhaps unexpected, and certainly surprisingly early, result of GM’s electric revolution.
We’ll be here to tell you all about GM’s ICE and EV plans, and invite you subscribe to GM Authority for more around-the-clock GM news coverage.
Comments
As with anything money is a factor is development of about anything.
Because of this some companies will not slow progress but struggle to survive gas or electric.
The economy and inflation could be the one wild card that changes much.
Millennials have been spoiled rotten by low inflation & low interest rates.
Time to bring back the 1970s stagflation era and let Millennials get a rude wakeup call like boomers & Gen See’s did 40 years ago.
Good luck affording that $75,000 truck or $100,000 Escalade with 20% interest rates
Yes, but please recall that back then consumer interest on loans and credit cards was tax deductible.
Alright, so long as you are ok raising salary up to what inflation has been, is be making double doing my job in the 70s.
Well sadly salaries for the middle class have been pretty much stagnant for 40+ years. On the other hand income for folks at the top end such as CEOs has gone through the roof. I’m all for fair compensation but we have a really out of whack system compared to what was once the norm.
Wrong. Real median household incomes went up by 30% since 1984. If you don’t like it, move to Japan, and see who’s complaining.
Not talking about household income but individual income. Way more single family earners back then. Now more two income families.
No, since 1984 easy credit and low cost slave like labor became the norm while income stayed the same since Reagan’s Neo Liberal policies allowed rich to get richer and poor, poorer.
This , not the web, us why so many malls died.
20% interest rates would hurt everyone not just millenials.
The economy will be tough when a mutation jumps our current vaccine and, if an appropriate booster is developed, the 12 month roll out.
GM wastes R&D on never used platforms with Omega and these kits being examples. As for EVs I’m still wondering how urbanites will recharge
That is 100% correct, Evan! Our entire economy right now it propped up with low interest rates. Mortgage and car loans under 2%, I have never seen anything like it. We used to think a 5% mortgage was low, and that was just 15 years ago, but after the great recession rates have never gotten back to a “normal” level. Basically nearly free money all around. At some point this will change, and so will the economy, and especially stock valuations.
Low interest rates are like injecting Nitrous Oxide into the economy, but as anyone who has run engines with nitrous systems knows, there is a point you hit diminishing returns.
you forgot the biggest loan of all … the national debt.
The degree of change in the operating environment was something no one saw coming .
Finally GM listened to my suggestion to build AFX/HO cars. You know those race set cars that you just snapped on new bodies, maybe changed the tires and magnets inside but the base format was the same!
Here goes Mary Barra dimwit again.
I still think gm’s “all electric” vision will blow up in their face some day. Cant force people to buy something they do not want. Didn’t we see this in the glorious Roger Smith years?
Good old GM, not taking any chances at all. Bronco – Wrangler fighter? Who needs that? Compact truck to sell opposite the new Ford Maverick? No plans anywhere. Taking a great name like Blazer and putting it on a decent but boring crossover that is nothing like the original? That’s the GM we all know and love! GM is the Wonder Bread of car manufacturers, reliable, boring, you always know what you’re going to get, you know, what your mother bought.
GM is doing fine strategically, Bronco is a win for Ford, and Maverick I think will be a good volume vehicle for them too, but How is Ford doing in Full Size SUV’s? Last time I checked GM dominates this segment, and Full size HD pickups, GM is adding marketshare. GM is also ahead on EV’s and AV’s, which to me is a more strategic bet, that has already paid back in spades, have you been watching Gm’s stock price? Investors like myself Love what MB is doing… Keep it up… Now, could GM do better? of course, but resources are limited, and GM has to direct them where it makes the most sense both short and long term. I think GM highest EV priority should be building a Chevy that can compete directly against the Model Y, and ASAP, but that is hard, and GM knows it, so they are doing Hummer, and Lyriq, and going in their own direction.
Going all in on EVs is a far bigger risk than any of the things you listed. If you don’t like the strategy going electric that’s fine, but to say GM isn’t taking risks is rediculous. They pretty much are pushing all their chips to the center of the table with electric
Handles and rides like a skateboard no thanks!
I’m still not buying that Cadillac is redesigning the XT5 for 2023 when the Lyriq (a vehicle that is roughly the same size) is coming out next year and is the first of the brand’s complete transition to electric by the end of the decade.
Investing in a new ICE model, even if it’s a reworked existing platform, creates brand confusion not only for customers but for dealers who stayed with the brand.
I still think gm’s ‘all electric future” will be them in the backside. You think they would have learned from the glorious Roger Smith years that you can’t force people to buy something they do not want.
Go figure! Big Gov gives them more honest tax money. Huh, so the they may develope a technology they will over charge the tax paying citizen consumers for, or just pass around their handout from bank account to bank account masquerading it as Invested r&d, no wonder they only find comfort insisting we need to hide behind a mask as well. Of course, as all good stolen tax payers money these days, make sure the moneies pass thru the lending institution first! These guys BIg Business and Big old Government, have something up their sleeves, with the Increasing rate they are blatantly steeling from us. How do we the tax payers not own these companies we fund? Damn their so narcissistic they don’t even offer us employee discounts as the investors of all this unrealistic BS!
I believe that the 0% Emission Electric Car/Truck goals are like the Plastic Bags you get at checkouts. The Plastic Bags replaced the Paper Bags and was heralded as Environmentally and Economically Friendly at the time as to why they are better than the Paper Bags.
Now, after being introduced in 1982 and widely used almost everywhere by almost everyone it has been found to be a major landfill polluter amongst other Environmental Catastrophes business is Returning to the Paper Bags because they were better for the Environment and all things bagging.
Plastic Bags will still be used for some boutique items, possibly, While we return to the good Old Paper Bags.
After a time, I am sure that the 0% Emission Free Electric Vehicles will also fall out of favor to the Boutique category, and the ICE cars and Trucks will become favored once again.
I spent a year trying to convince myself about Electric. Till solid state and i buy a house not happening. I live across the street from 440 charging still a nightmare. SO I Di th right things and bought a Camaro.
Not sure why synthetic fuels are being ignored. Grown by algae and zero upstream pollution like Electric. No one is speaking if it but once in Formula one and we see it in ICE engines I hope we always have a niche of ICE cars.