“No More Valves:” How GM’s New Architecture Will Transform Gas Cars, Too

General Motors says it is trying to create the “car of the future.” It’s powered by software that’s constantly updated, packed with advanced features, and increasingly autonomous. But given recent trends in the United States and abroad, it’s clear that some cars of the future will still run on gasoline.

As many car manufacturers discover new products with high technology and low cost Methods of making electric carsGM wants to run a similar playbook with its gas-powered cars as well. What’s more, it’s working on a single electrical system architecture and software configuration that can support all of its vehicles, from compact gas cars sold in Latin America to Cadillac’s full-size electric SUVs.

“In 2028, we will launch the next generation of our mainframe computing system, starting with Cadillac Escalade iQ“It’s drivetrain-agnostic, which means this technology will work across both electric and gas vehicles… and the payoff is tremendous,” said David Richardson, GM’s senior vice president of software engineering and services.

That’s no easy task, executives and engineers told me at the GM Forward tech event in New York City yesterday. But if they can pull this off, they might take one of the most unique things about electric vehicle development and apply it to gas-powered cars that require fewer parts and maintenance, use less energy, and cost less to operate over time.

It could mean the end of fuse, for one thing.

Get the area (architecture)

GM calls this the “centralized computing architecture.” To understand why they’re important, it helps to understand how the electrical systems in your car evolved in the first place.

The first engine control units (ECUs) were born. Electronic fuel injection control unitsWhich became widespread in the eighties. Over time, as cars developed, more computer systems were added as well. Anti-lock braking systems. Climate control systems. Your infotainment and navigation system. Safety systems. Door and window mechanisms. In most cases, they are designed and manufactured by different companies than the automakers themselves, with very little communication and commonality between all the different parts. Oh, and the software that controls all this stuff may have even been created more External parties.

As it turns out, this was kind of a gradual approach to building a car. It’s like making something out of a giant, random old pile of Legos that your kid keeps in the trash, rather than making something purposeful, like a custom Lego set. If you were to design a car from scratch today, you wouldn’t do it this way. You might want to build a car using as few separate computers as possible, and connect them via a single, modern software suite.

Today, this is how most advanced electric cars are built. It’s called ‘zone engineering’, where the different ‘zones’ inside the car are controlled by a small group of computer systems. The old way of doing things is called “domain-based architecture”. Regional architectures were pioneered by Tesla, and Companies like Rivian and Chinese automakers Work with those ideas.

Sticking with the legacy field-based setup of an electric vehicle means more wiring, more parts, more software complexity — and a better ability to Software updates It can add new features or fix bugs throughout the vehicle.

Naturally, these are all things automakers want from their next generation electric cars. Battery costs are still high, so you need to cut costs and innovate in manufacturing with the rest of the car. Additionally, they all have big dreams of generating revenue through advanced software features.

But how do you deliver these innovations in gas vehicles, at a time when electric vehicle sales are slowing, tax breaks are expiring, and car companies like GM are realizing… They won’t be going fully electric anytime soon?

In this case, enter what GM calls a “centralized computing architecture.”

GM’s approach covers electric vehicles and gas vehicles

It’s one thing for an EV company to just go for zone architectures. But if you’re GM, and you make a lot of cars globally with gas and electric engines, trying to do things the new way and the traditional way at the same time is an expensive problem. Hence, she had to find a way to cover both.

The centralized architecture does just that, Gary Segan, GM’s director of platform engineering, told me. It significantly reduces the number of units of a car by consolidating them into a few smaller units.

A central liquid-cooled computer manages the functions of 12 different conventional units and ‘thinks’ the entire vehicle; Another module handles connectivity, such as radio, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and 5G wireless; Finally, three “accumulators” act as relays for signals from hundreds of different sensors to the main computer.

So what does it mean for the consumer? Segan said as much. “We’ve moved away from standard fuse boxes,” he said. Compilers handle these functions instead. This means new features are added faster over time. “We’ve added significant increases in capabilities, so it’s not just taking what this does and putting it in one box,” Cygan added. “We’re adding computing upgrades, connectivity upgrades, and vehicle communications upgrades.”

It also means lower costs and less complexity, but as GM adds more to these systems, the impact on pricing for consumers is unclear, he said. “If we take the same capacity you have here and move to this architecture, it will be a lower material cost,” he said. “But we’re adding capabilities, adding better silicon, and adding the ability to control circuits in the car at the same time.”

In a sense, this will allow GM to build out its gas and electric vehicles in a similar way over time. But these engines still have diverse needs to work with. Take mainframe cooling, for example.

“In an electric vehicle, you can take advantage of a system that actually cools the battery,” Cygan said. “But in an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle, where do you get coolant for it, because the coolant in the engine system is a lot warmer than it needs to be, right? So figuring out how to do that in an ICE is a challenge.”

Interestingly, while this system will debut on the Escalade IQ in 2028 — which GM has confirmed is a current model, not an upcoming one — it will be added to the rest of GM’s lineup after that. This includes any current generation cars, as this setup will not require an entirely new model to implement.

Cygan also believes it could be an upgrade in terms of repairability. “There are fewer things that can go wrong, fewer things that can go wrong if “They make mistakes, and it takes time to diagnose,” he said.

General Motors software dreams

At the GM Forward event, the automaker explained that it sees its future in robotics, artificial intelligence, and AI Autonomous vehicles. But it will have to offer some of that technology in gas-powered cars for now. In its view, this is a better setup for consumers given the features it will offer.

“This means the vehicles are always up to date, offering 10 times more software updates than our previous system,” Richardson said. “It means a self-driving system that reacts in milliseconds, and a vehicle network with 1,000 times more bandwidth for faster connectivity, enabling richer entertainment and future AI workloads. So it’s a leap to a vehicle that can think and react as one.”

It also means standardizing the software across all of these cars, which will also save costs. But it remains to be seen whether this structure will be viable from the start and deliver on all these promises. After all, we’ve seen a lot of issues arising with new software platforms, Including those from General Motors.

However, it’s clear that even if customers aren’t ready to give up fuel use yet, whatever they drive next could offer plenty of lessons from electric cars. After all, GM’s big dreams of autonomy and software depend on it.