General Motors last night said it would spend about US$246m on electric drivetrain manufacturing including construction of a high volume electric drive production facility at its Baltimore transmission plant that will begin to manufacture in 2013 electric motors for the automaker’s two-mode hybrid system. The plant will be the first electric motor manufacturing facility in the US operated by a major automaker.
Its first electric motors will be used in the next generation of rear wheel drive two-mode hybrids due out in 2013.
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GM said bringing manufacturing in-house would create about 200 jobs, lower costs and improve performance, quality, reliability and manufacturability of electric motors by controlling design, materials selection and production processes.
“Electric motor innovation supported the first wave of automotive growth a century ago with the [Cadillac] electric starter, which eliminated the need for a hand crank, and revolutionised automotive travel for the customer,” said GM global product operations chief Tom Stephens. “We think the electrification of today’s automobiles will be just as revolutionary and just as beneficial to our customers. Electric motors will play a huge role in that.”
“In the future, electric motors might become as important to GM as engines are now,” Stephens added. “By designing and manufacturing electric motors in-house, we can more efficiently use energy from batteries as they evolve, potentially reducing cost and weight – two significant challenges facing batteries today.”
GM said it had been building this in-house capability for years, expanding electric motor research and development, design and validation capabilities at facilities in Michigan, Indiana and California. It has also developed math-based design and computing capacity for electric motors.
GM last August received a US department of energy $105m grant [inlcuded in the total $246m spend] to build US manufacturing plants for electric motors and related driveline components.
“The new GM is about speed, and we are delivering quickly on the government’s desire to grow domestic expertise in electric vehicle technologies, such as batteries and electric motors,” Stephens said.
As well as growing in-house capabilities, GM said it would will continue to purchase and co-design electric motors with suppliers.
“This is a strategy we use today with batteries,” Stephens said. “We are partnering with suppliers to create innovations faster than ever before. Our goal is simply to establish GM as a leader in automotive electric motors. We see that leadership as a key enabler – both to our long-term success and to our nation’s move away from oil dependence.”
GM is scheduled to launch its ‘range extender’ Chevrolet Volt hybrid in California, Michigan and Washington DC later this year and plans to sell an Opel/Vauxhall Ampera version in Europe a year or so later.
