General Motors reportedly is mulling spending up to US$1bn to renovate its 60 year old technical centre complex in Warren, Michigan.
The company has asked the city for tax breaks but has not approved the project, spokesman Dan Flores told Bloomberg.
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“It’s very possible that the place really hasn’t been updated,” Joe Phillippi, president of consulting firm AutoTrends, told the news service.
“Given the things GM needs to do and all of these advanced technologies, they probably need the space.”
The report noted Toyota had spent $1.2bn developing sites in Arizona, California and Michigan and announced plans to spend almost $200m more. The automaker’s main product development sites are in Japan, however.
GM s renovations would include some new buildings to house 2,500 new staffers, mostly in electrical engineering, information technology and software development, Bloomberg’s source said.
GM’s so called Tech Center, home to everything from basic mechanical engineering to design studios to the battery lab for electric-drive vehicles, hasn’t really had major renovations since it was built in the 1950s, Flores said.
“The campus is in need of renovations to make it a world class facility,” he said. “But we have not approved the project yet.”
The proposed project and its hefty price tag came to light recently when the mayor of Warren talked about GM’s proposal in a speech, the Detroit Free Press reported earlier.
