Three months after the international debut of the all-new Buick Verano Pro in China, General Motors has just confirmed that the next-generation compact sedan will feature an all-new powertrain. As such, the Verano Pro was the model chosen to introduce a high-tech, efficient turbocharged four-cylinder engine to enhance the performance of the company’s vehicle portfolio.
The Buick Verano Pro will be the first vehicle to adopt the turbocharged 1.5-liter engine that’s part of the eighth generation of GM’s EcoTec engine family. It was developed based on the company’s global engine architecture to meet both the strictest standards emissions and the needs of younger buyers. The engine features a modular design that offers multiple power outputs and low fuel consumption.
Although the automaker has not officially announced it, we’ll assume that the new turbocharged 1.5L engine is the same one that the Chinese authorities leaked last month for the 2022 Buick Envision range. SAIC-GM’s statement for utility vehicles indicates that the new engine will carry the RPO code LAH and is capable of producing an outstanding 150 kW, or the equivalent of 201 U.S. horsepower.
All-new 1.5L Ecotec LAH I4 engine
In the new Buick Verano Pro, the all-new turbocharged 1.5-liter engine generates 135 kW or 181 horsepower, the highest output so far for the compact car, along with 250 Nm or 184 pound-feet of torque available between 1,500 and 5,000 rpm. Coupled with a modern continuously variable automatic transmission, this powertrain configuration allows the Verano Pro to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in just seven seconds, making it a responsive and fun car to drive.
In addition, the new powertrain promises to improve the Buick Verano Pro’s fuel efficiency by 6 percent compared to the second-generation model, according to the stringent WLTC test procedures. This also enables the vehicle to meet China’s latest 6B national emissions standard, offering combined fuel consumption as low as 5.95 L/100 km or 39.5 U.S. mpg.
Aside from the Buick Verano Pro, the all-new turbocharged 1.5L engine will soon be rolled out in products of various brands and segments of GM’s portfolio in China. It can be combined with a nine-speed automatic transmission or a CVT, and is compatible with 48V mild-hybrid, HEV and PHEV systems. Its launch expands the company’s robust global powertrain lineup, which includes turbocharged 2.0L, 1.3L and 1.0L variants of the EcoTec engine family.
Subscribe to GM Authority as we bring you the latest Buick Verano Pro news, Buick Verano news, Buick news and ongoing GM news coverage.
Comments
7 seconds 0-60? Just 39mpg? My cavalier with the 2.2 eco tech gets 36. And it’s got 270k miles on it. I do not understand this new turbocharged engine crave. I’m pretty sure that the 2.7 turbo proves that a smaller turbo engine doesn’t return the large economy gains over a larger NA. I would think a 2.5 with variable valve lift and skip fire would return much more in terms of performance economy and reliability. Course this is China and maybe that tech is off the table for communist countries.
Jake, who is smoking more, you or your cavalier?
My daily driver is a Corvette, but I too have an old Cavalier (2005) for snow days. The Cavalier really does get MPG in the low 30’s even with a four speed auto. As far as smoking goes, I’m over 100K and have never added any Mobil 1 synthetic between changes. Great little car and I’m an Eco tech fan. Got the 2.5 in my wife’s Envision.
Now lets compared the emission of your cavalier and this new 1.5T
And crashworthiness. Improvements in NHTSA and especially IIHS’s crash tests, like small overlap frontal, require significant additional structure, which adds weight and cuts fuel economy. It’s not the engine’s fault that MPG goes down.
Euro NCAP refused to adopt a similar small overlap test because they stated it would hurt CO2 emissions. They rather take the additional deaths over CO2 goals.
Deaths also lower co2 emissions. Talk about 2 birds with one stone.
Lmao
Lots of countries have car tax based on the size of engine, or government subsidies on smaller engine. That’s why the 1.5L.
My little car meets all applicable emissions standards. It gets tested by the State every time I renew my plates. Is it as clean as a new car? No, but it was manufactured in August 2004.
It meets 2004 emission standards. Thanks fur setting our air on for
And a bicycle is even better.
Mobil One high mileage synthetic is the only way to go. Love Mobil One synthetic from the get go.
Switch to Mobil high mileage synthetic at 75K miles.
Stay consistent with the same brand of engine oil throughout the entire life of the engine. The engine metallurgy becomes acclimated to the chemical additives in the particular brand of oil. When you switch engine oil brands the new chemistry in the engine oil shocks the metal surfaces in the engine and reduces engine life.
I just finished up with Hot August Nights in Reno.
Now I’m heading over to Speed Week in Wendover.
Stay safe and have fun.
Mick 1. Definitely me… At 280k, that 2.2 ecotech burns 1 quart ever 10k. I just hate this trend of turbo charging as it doesn’t serve us. I’ve driven a 2014 5.3 on occasions for work, and it gets better real mileage than epa estimates. We also see that the 2.7 ford Ecoboost hardly ever meets it’s expectations for mileage and has less power and is know for having issues, major issues around 150k, and it’s now the 5.3 is a half a million mile engine. I’m finding that the same with most NA engines, and we are expecting to put these smaller engines in our cars and SUV’s?
1994 Honda VX, 1.5L VTEC normal breathing… 5 speed hatch with A/C and was fairly zippy.
ANY day of the week would turn in 60 MPG on a trip and generally 50 roaming around town. Honest numbers. Drove it to NYC the weekend before it went to the junk yard with over 300K on the clock and it got 59 average. Frame was gone due to Vermont winters…. Note, ’94 (imported for 2-3 years) no turbo, no batteries and certified low emission….
Pretty sure the quest for high tech crap isn’t as necessary as one thinks or Mr Honda was barking up the wrong tree. Mr Honda doesn’t bark by the way. I imagine a turbo would have lit up the tires more, but that is what the 427 is for….eh??
juiced up small engines are not news necessarily…. just sayin…
I know that Ford contracts with a German firm to engineer their small IC engines. The Germans are leaders in automotive IC engines under 2.5 liters. Just look at Volkswagen.
Everybody is going to these small IC engines to meet government mandated fuel consumption standards.
BTW: Turbocharging packs more power into the same size block versus NA. Caterpillar, Cummins, and Detroit Diesel know this. More air provides greater combustion bang. Also greater fuel blast, less emissions.
Go Turbos.
“The Germans are leaders in automotive IC engines under 2.5 liters. Just look at Volkswagen.”
Take a good hard look. Injection systems that grenade (VW) valve stem seal issues, sticky rings.
Pass.
Turbos make sense when you have a lean-burn engine (DI gas and diesel) because you have a lot of air you need to recover heat from, and you’re paying for pumping extra air into the cylinders. Unfortunately, lean-burn increases particulate and NOx emissions, which is why Europeans have particulate filters on their gas engines now, and CA’s NOx standards may very well result in DEF on gasoline vehicles.
VW and others tuned their gas engines to barely meet EU NOx standards during their drive cycle, and it turned out that they were way over in normal driving use. As a result the EU started on-road emissions tests that required changes that cut fuel economy and increased emissions.
That’s one of the reasons they’re pushing hybrids now, to keep engines out of high-emissions operating conditions. They add an on-board charger, and you got yourself the European trend of plug-in hybrids.
Like a lot of things, there’s no free lunch.
Look at the bigger heavier car the buick is!
I would love to see GM put that engine in the Buick Encore GX and call it the Grand Sport and also in the Chevy Trailblazer and add a SS emblem.
It is already bad enough they slapped the Blazer name on the weaksauce mom wagon with no discerning offroad capabilities. you would think that after the mid nineties ss badging every thing failure, nobody would consider doing what you suggest to anything that does not have RWD and a V8…..now supercharge the LS, get it over 700hp and then we can talk.
Lets see; Another Ecotec based engine. Direct injection? = carbonized intake valves. Skip fire?=more engine problems. Tiny piston oil control rings? = oil consumption at a rate of 1 liter every 500 miles. PCV system that they can’t get to work? = another liter of oil burned every 500 miles. Good job GM. Dealer service departments love your ever advancing inferior technology.
Another turd of a small engine keep it in China !
Why is GM giving this segment away in the US? They make it difficult to buy a model and then cancel it because no one is buying it and the CEO gets 43 million dollars last year!
2015 buick is in the shop over 51 times my mechanics work on it for free because they feel bad for me. The cooling system was put in backwards nothing works properly everything breaks within a few months and then I have to get it replaced the smallest parts to largest parts. In fact I just it got out of the shop 2 days ago don’t buy a Buick.
Why is GM working out of China?
Because the Chinese buy over a Million Buicks a year. Every year.
Market share.
Made in China??
80-90% of Buicks are bought in china. They will look at a buick and a Mercedes, and buy the Buick. (honestly, besides the S class, Mercedes doesnt inspire me at all) Buick was the first car in china back before the commies and is like Chevy trucks over there. It’s a tradition family affair
CSS 375T LAH
Nice looking Malibu.
hopefully a better motor than the small displacement ford edge with a turbo that beat itself do death so bad they quit giving warrantee, i would rather have a bigger displacement my self.
Keep your Chinese made engines in china. thanks
Look the future is a tough road to follow with IC.
MPG is only part of the problem but emissions is even tougher.
To meet these regs it is going to take smaller engines, cylinder cut out and a host of Rube Goldberg tricks to meet these numbers that are coming. This and future lower cost are why the automakers are moving to electric.
By many web comments people just do not factor in all the things involved here to understand the problems to meet the new numbers will be.
Even Hybrids will be effected as they still have IC.
The harsh reality is automakers are not going electric because they want to but because they have to.
The move to electric will be fueled with the public mostly due to the higher and higher cost of more complex smaller and smaller IC engines. It will get to a point that the EV even with its issues will be less hassle and cheaper.
I fear next they will make it near impossible to hang on to our classic cars with IC engines. I have already accepted we will be electric on daily drivers but all they have to do is increase the ethanol content to where it will eat our cars alive.
It is way past time we need people to be fully educated on this ans stop the petty complaints and start dealing with the real harsh realities we face.
EV’S aren’t going to be cheaper. They require 80% of the same parts that ICE cars do, and the rest is made of rare earth metals. They have transmissions, transaxles, motors that feature less cast parts and long meticulous copper windings. Unless you can figure out how to cast or forge an entire electric motor winding, there is no way an electric motor will be cheaper than a lost foam cast aluminum block and heads. Likewise, they got a lot of 2-3 motor EV’s if you want something with better than abysmal performance. And then there’s the batteries, which are not like a big lead acid where you cast it plastic and fill with acid. It’s thousands of cells meticulously placed with coolant lines running through it and a massive eltric harness for delivery. Already these things msrp 3-4 times a comparable ICE car with even smaller profit margins. If battery cost were cut in half, they wouldn’t be more affordable, If cost of batteries and motors and brakes and seat and AC were cut in half (which they won’t ) still won’t be more affordable.
But but but less labor!?!?,
Really? Cause as I see it, current car lines just hook up the engines and tranny’s, and drop them in the chassis. The chassis won’t change, you still need transaxles, electric motors and now battery cells, that’s actually more things to manufacturer, not less, thats actually more Laborers, more factories, even if you save 20% of workers at the engine plant, now you need shipping and receiving and corporate at the battery plant.
EV’s=cars owned by elites only.
Sorry Steven once automakers cut the development cost for so many gas drive trains it will make cars cheaper and easier to develop.
Much like computers they may cod us the same but we will get more for the price and the automakers will make more money.
For the automakers it is not about saving trees it is about profits.
Welcome to the real world.
Wait wait! C8.r, you believe that once a solid EV platform is developed, that automakers will fire their entire engineering team and no new improvements will be required? I’m frankly sorry, but I do not one bit see how that is an accurate view of things. I don’t see vehicles that cost 3-4 times as much even after being mass produced coming down by that much, especially when they weigh in twice as much just to the shear amount of materials required.
How will they be cheaper? Materials? Lithium is plentiful, but nowhere near as easy to extract as iron or aluminum, ditto with copper.
Parts? I just described above how these EV’s require more parts and construction time than a comparable ICE vehicle.
Labor? I just described again above these require more personnel to make, unless you intend on making less which with the great reset is Likely the plan
R&D? R&D is less than a fraction of the cost of a vehicle program. GM focuses way more on union contracts than pruning their engineering divisions.
What, please am I missing? Math doesn’t add up at all.
C8.R: “To meet these regs it is going to take smaller engines, cylinder cut out and a host of Rube Goldberg tricks to meet these numbers that are coming. This and future lower cost are why the automakers are moving to electric”.
Exactly, but who is creating the “Regs”? The government. They are shoving these Battery cars down our throats because they are convinced they are right about the “science”. Just saw the new Mustang EV. Nice car, same size as my wife’s Envision. $60 Grand.
And guess what even if we vote them out the automakers have set their path.
Sad but true
PG&E can’t even keep its current grid running in California. You would need 100 nuclear reactors in the USA to power the grid needed for the shift you want.
The goalposts will be moved back, V6 and V8’s will remain, and this is all about virtue signaling until electric cars get a lot cheaper, which will be in about 15 years after the latest round of patents expire.
Why are you buying stuff made in China?
Like the Envision.
We need to boycot some of it, if we can.
Supporting the good ole commie party, are we!
They are on a course for world domination.
Fields full of missiles aimed at North America.
The US better watch out.
China is building up there army and war machine bigger and bigger, every day.
And we keep buying the crap make there.
Has to be the dumbest thing I ever heard of.
Just my honest opinion here.
This should be an option for the Encore..
The only decent engine to ever come out of General Motors was the 3800 V6. With proper maintenance, the engine could last 350K miles. Subsequent engines after that (even with proper maintenance) have been nothing but timing chain / oil consumption disasters. A mechanic friend of mine at a GM dealership told me if the public only knew the truth about some of these newer engines..there would be outrage. Constant “warranty work” on engines with less than 20K miles, etc…that’s not quality folks, that’s garbage.
You are misinformed. The small block chevy V8 is legendary snd the LS1 family has websites and magazines devoted to it. Ls1 engines in suburbans routinely go 250,000-300,000 without removing a valve cover.
Here’s the real story on Buick’s sales in China and a couple of other things.
When Nixon went over to china to work on opening up chine to the western world, David Scott was his point man. When the team from the USA went over to china they shipped ahead a boat load of Buicks to get around. This was at a time China was a closed country. When deals were struck and the folks from the USA were asked what are you doing with these cars. The Chinese were told you can keep them we have no need to ship them back to the USA. Well as in most country’s The Buicks ended up in the hands of the government leaders. From that time on when the general population saw their leader driving Buicks they believed they were the finest luxury cars made. keep in mind this was still a closed society.
To this day as handed down from parents and others Buicks are still as well thought of today.
Enough about Buicks when I got my first job and bought my first car it had a 235 Blue Flame engine. It used a quart of oil a week back and forth to work. As most cars it had a road pipe. when you were siting, everyone’s car were puffing out the same amount. nobody gave a dam. Today it is so rare to see a car trailing exhaust the notion that we need to improve is absurd. A while back I bought a Malibu Max. that was one of the most useful and best cars I ever bought. Five months later we bought my wife a new Suburban, it wasn’t long after that Obama had the gas prices at $4.00 a gal. Well you can guess we traveled a lot in the Malibu than the Suburban. After a little over 150K miles I traded the Malibu for an Impala. What a great car with a 3.6L V6, loved it. Now I drive a 2500HD and every dump truck that I pass pollutes at least 100 times more.
Why don’t we try to look at the real wastes and problems and leave Cars and SUV’s alone.
It was earlier than that. Buicks were popular with the elite in China before WWII, in the 1920s.
The second factor is that China has crappy roads and awful city traffic. It’s also relatively cheap in large Asian cities to get a chauffeur. (You call them, and they take a taxi or shuttle to your place to drive your car. In some places it’s cheaper and easier for them to drive your car back home than to pay for parking) Those factors favor a passenger’s car, like quiet Buick with cushy seats and suspensions.
the EPA is a joke. Modern cars make almost none of the typical pollutants – HC, NOx. But in 2009 they made CO2 a pollutant as well before this AGW hysteria. CO2 is a they byproduct of ideal combustion – you can’t get around it. They’re basically moving to outlaw ICE.
I don’t know why Miller cycle never caught on. The Prius uses Atkinson cycle and achieves over 40% brake thermal efficiency. The Mazda skyaktiv (HCCI) achieves 42-43%. Diesels are just over 40%, and they’re being priced out of the market with all their “emissions” equipment (soot isn’t a “diesel” problem, it’s a direct injection problem, and gas engines still don’t have particulate filters in america).
This is junk make a 4 banger work harder when a 2.4 turbo works even better. I have been work on this engine for years mainly in the cruise to change an alternator belt you have to remove all air intake plastic and engine mount if your rich and don’t perfect for ya if you a 90 % er make sure you get the extended coverage
I’m driving an 2019 encore 1.4 liter turbocharged 6 speed transmission. It okay once you get moving from a dead stop it’s a dog .but I once drove a Toyota back in the late 70s in California and it was worse so obviously this is our future .personally I don’t what to drive anything with lest than 6 cylinders.
Anel.