In August 2020, General Motors announced an ambitious plan to roll out its latest electrification technologies in China, the world’s largest automotive market. This includes the adoption of the BEV3 electrical architecture and the innovative Ultium battery system, which will support 40 percent of the company’s product launches by 2025. Now, GM is taking an important step to manufacture the new Ultium EV platform in the Asian country.
SAIC-GM, General Motors’ main joint venture in China, recently signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the municipal government to build the Ultium platform at the automaker’s facility in Wuhan. This agreement will start the investment plan for the Wuhan complex to host the production of future electric vehicles for the Chinese market.
GM Wuhan plant
In addition to being one of GM’s newest vehicle manufacturing centers in China, the Wuhan industrial complex is primarily responsible for the production of the company’s new electrified products and powertrains sold in that market. The plant currently builds the Buick Velite 6 PHEV, the Buick Velite 6 Plus and the Chevrolet Menlo EV, which are all exclusive vehicles for that country.
The heart of GM’s upcoming all-electric vehicle portfolio, the Ultium platform integrates the company’s 26-plus years of electrification expertise and its forward-thinking technology advantages. Local Chinese media report that SAIC-GM and the Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center (PATAC) participated in the design process of the Ultium platform’s underlying architecture.
According to sources familiar with the matter, SAIC-GM expects 95 percent of parts used in the fully electric vehicles based on the Ultium platform to be locally sourced in China. With this, the arrival of the next-generation EV architecture will help Wuhan’s automotive industry accelerate the transition to electrification envisioned by GM, especially for models destined for the Buick and Chevrolet brands.
GM is expected to make an official announcement shortly on the agreement reached with Wuhan authorities and reveal more details of the investment plan to manufacture the upcoming Ultium-based vehicles in China. The all-new Cadillac Lyriq, which will launch early next year in the Chinese market, is the first of more than 10 locally made vehicles with the new EV platform that GM will release in China.
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Comments
This makes complete sense, more scale = lower platform cost per unit.
In Wuhan? Is this a joke? So those rats killed five million people and brought suffering rest of the world population by creating a biologic weapon in Wuhan Lab. Now GM rewards this accomplishment! What GM gonna call those batteries and EVs Buick Wuhan, Chevy Corona, GMC Covid19.
What’s next Mary, how about putting another car factory this time in Xinjiang to produce Cadillac Genocide and Interment. I’m sure she is drooling over nonpaid slave Uyghur workers.
China has won, at least for the next 3 1/2 years. There are a lot of smart (fortune) cookies in China.
Fortune cookies came from the USA, not China… But you are right, lots of incredibly smart people in China, not to mention smart Chinese in all American tech companies. Look the the deans list from any of the tech or engineering schools, lots of chen and chan, not too many smith and jones… Americans have been dumbed down, while the Chinese have educated the next generation of engineers and innovators. The is just the facts!
General Motors was saved from bankruptcy and extinction in 2009 by the American taxpayers.
Rick wagoner said it was “to keep good paying jobs in America.”
Since then CEOs Rick, fritz, that clown from att and lying Mary has been axing American factories and American jobs.
I am an EX “gM customer for life”.
Can you please tell me exactly which American factories Mary has axed that could be re-purposed in the future? and then kindly balance them with the factories she has launched? As for Jobs, Is GM a business designed to make a profit, or a federal jobs program?
I mean, GM closed Lordstown, but is building a battery factory right next door which will recover many of the lost jobs. New factory in Tennessee, completely re-built the run down Detroit Hamtramck plant, updated Orion, Wentzville, Flint, and Ft Wayne with new paint and body shop.
Maybe you do not realize, but the auto industry is under change, EV’s require less parts, less complexity, which means less jobs, thats the bottom line. You are not going to stop this transition, so either get on the train, or watch it pull out of the station and leave you behind. Sad state of America is that so many “want” to be left behind, not the case in China, where it would be shameful for parents if their children finish school with less than a bachelors degree, and most go on to earn masters degrees, and even doctoral studies. It’s no wonder why America is in decline, hard to innovate when you are stuck in past patterns. Just go visit the engineering department of any US company in advanced technology, including defense, full of Chinese and Indian descendant engineers. Why is that?
Does GM not realize that this will have a very negative impact on world sales especially in the USA when this information gets out in the media.
Lets see who buys anything from of all places Wuhan? Not for any real reason other than people are a funny animal to associate a bad thing to everything coming out of that area!
More of GM moving to China, that is no surprise at all.
USA destined Buicks are already made in China (I Think Encore switched to Mexco though) and it won’t be long until our EVs are all imported as well. GM already imports the Spark, Trax, Trailblazer, Blazer, Equinox, All of Buick, and more. (This is all I have left in my showroom). Unless you’re buying a sports car or Truck…STAY AWAY FROM CGM (CHINESE GENERAL MOTORS)
The chemicals and raw materials to build batteries are scarce, expensive and not exactly environmentally friendly to mine. GM is making a smart decision to build the batteries – and therefore the platform that uses them, at a place close to the source of these raw materials. Its a bit of future-proofing, because environmental rules here in the US are always in flux and getting more stringent. I’m sure there is much more stability and access to the raw metals and such needed in china. Plus it is the worlds largest market. Sounds like a sound business decision to me.
Please don’t get me wrong… I really wish they could manufacture 100% of GM in the US or at least North America, but with the scale and cost of labor in the US (Union pressures), GM is doing what is best for the company, and ultimately the consumer.