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Happy Friday, and welcome to Critical Materials, your source for the biggest stories shaping the future of the auto industry.
Every Friday, we break down one big EV story from and recap must-read stories from around the web on driverless cars, batteries, charging, and more.
– Today’s email was written by Rob Stumpf and Tim Levin.
Plug In: GM’s Big EV And AI Plans
GM CEO Mary Barra speaks at the GM Forward event on Wednesday. Photo: Tim Levin
This week, I was in New York for General Motors’ annual tech event, GM Forward. The automaker laid out a broad vision for its future tech that includes a new brain for its cars, an AI assistant, and a new EV platform built around supposedly game-changing batteries.
Much of what GM shared wasn’t entirely new. But taken together, the day also provided the clearest picture yet of what GM’s future vehicles will look like—both its electric and gas-powered ones—and how they’ll compete with increasingly tech-heavy offerings from Tesla and the Chinese.
Here’s what stood out:
A 4th-Generation EV Platform
It’s built around prismatic, structurally integrated lithium-manganese-rich batteries that GM says deliver energy density similar to high-nickel cells and costs similar to lithium iron phosphate. “With that being unlocked, that changes everything,” Zach Walker, GM’s director of global EV architecture, told me at Wednesday’s event. In an EV, he said, “the cost is the cell.”
The overarching idea sounds a lot like what Ford is doing with its Universal Electric Vehicle platform and the Fathom. The goal is to make EVs that are lighter, more efficient, and better-packaged than its Ultium cars. Ultimately, that creates an EV that needs less battery capacity and is less expensive to produce (and hopefully buy, too).
Here are the big improvements GM is touting: a 15% reduction in vehicle mass, 20% greater efficiency, 20% less battery capacity for equivalent range, and 25% better aerodynamic performance, plus motors and power electronics that require 40% fewer parts.
The nitty-gritty details are still TBD, like when this platform will come to market and exactly which cars will use it. GM said it’s “built for broad appeal in the market’s largest segments,” which a spokesperson said means crossovers. Think whatever comes next after this generation of Cadillac Lyriq, Chevy Blazer, and so on.
A Centralized Compute Architecture
GM’s new Central Compute Unit installed in a vehicle. Photo: GM
Those fourth-gen EVs will utilize a new, more centralized electrical architecture that GM says will lead to better digital features, faster connectivity, and better over-the-air updates.
The centerpiece is a Central Compute Unit that bundles together perception, propulsion, safety systems, and chassis controls. So, a lot of the things that today are handled by discrete control units spread across the car, each running their own software.
The benefits: an electrical system with 30% less wiring, 40 times more processing power, and 50% faster cellular connectivity
It debuts in the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ and will spread to both electric and gas-powered GM vehicles, starting with three-row SUVs and pickup trucks.
On stage, GM Chief Product Officer and former Tesla exec Sterling Anderson said the company has several preproduction vehicles running this hardware driving around its proving grounds.
Anderson said future in-car tech like autonomous driving (debuting on highways in the Escalade IQ next year) and in-car AI (more on that below) “needed this kind of computational power.”
OnStar AI
GM’s OnStar AI assistant. Photo: GM
At last year’s GM Forward, the company announced plans for an in-house AI assistant. Now it has a name and a firmer launch timeline: OnStar AI will come to the Cadillac Lyriq via an over-the-air update in the coming months, before rolling out to more of the lineup.
It’s GM’s answer to increasingly ambitious in-car AI assistants, like Grok in Teslas and the new Rivian Assistant, plus similar offerings in BMW and Mercedes vehicles.
Newer GM vehicles got built-in Google Gemini earlier this year, which drivers can already use to ask general knowledge questions and control their car in a more natural way. Anderson said OnStar AI will be better.
“It's been developed internally at GM to be able to manage this exchange that you have with your vehicle in ways that a general-purpose LLM would never do,” he said.
GM says OnStar AI will let drivers control their cars in a more conversational way and ask questions about their vehicles, but it’s also making some bigger claims about how it might be integrated into a driver’s life. Anderson gave the example of the car not just telling you you’re going to be late to pick up your kid from soccer practice, but proactively routing your spouse to the field and suggesting you pick up groceries instead.
A new OnStar app will replace the apps from GM’s various brands next year and also deliver one of the more tangible features announced at the event: a camera-based surveillance system for cars like Tesla’s Sentry mode.
My takeaways?
The Cadillac Escalade IQ.
General Motors has said it’s playing the long game on EVs, but it hasn’t shared much about what’s coming after this generation of Cadillacs and Chevys. Now we have a slightly better sense of what those EVs will look and feel like: more efficient, lighter, more software-defined, and, crucially, cheaper to build. All qualities that these cars will need to be cost- and feature-competitive with Tesla and the best stuff coming out of Chinese automakers, plus its crosstown rival.
Using new AI tools and “concurrent development,” GM says it’s aiming to design new vehicles in two years, about half the typical 4-5-year timeline.
The AI vision is ambitious too. There’s a big difference between a chatbot that can answer questions about your car or find vegan restaurants nearby and one you’ll actually trust to plan your family’s afternoon. I’ll be very interested to see how these capabilities perform over time, and how much people seem to want them.
Of course, legacy car companies have been talking for years about making vehicles that are more like smartphones. And yet, the pure-play EV startups still have the edge when it comes to software experiences and the breadth and depth of OTA updates.
GM has laid out a roadmap for closing that gap, while also leveling up its core EV tech. When these next-generation cars arrive, we’ll start to get a better sense of how much better and smarter they really are.
-Tim Levin
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Get Fully Charged: This Week’s Biggest EV News
The Slate Truck Photo: InsideEVs
We drove the BMW iX5. It has an estimated 450 miles of range from a 144-kWh battery, 460-kilowatt charging, and a smooth ride. BMW is making a phenomenal case for its buyers to skip the gas-powered X5 and buy the EV.
For more on the iX5, GM’s news, and more, check out this week’s Plugged-In Podcast on Youtube and audio platforms.
The Ferrari Luce—its first EV—finally gets a price. The quad-motor supercar packs 1,035 horsepower, a massive 122-kWh battery, and a sticker price over a half-million dollars.
The Kia EV3 is here as one of America’s finest, inexpensive EVs. Now it’s an even better deal thanks to new lease and financing deals.
Ford is upping the range in the base Mustang Mach-E. The extended-range battery is now fit as standard at no extra cost, giving it a 23% boost in range.
GM is revamping its approach to in-car software. Its next-gen EVs (and even some gas cars) will get a big boost in tech. Here's what's coming.
Rivian is finally moving more serious volume thanks to its new R2 SUV. It was the second best-selling EV brand in Q3.
It has a long way to go to catch up to Tesla, though—especially since Tesla says it's targeting an output of 5 million cars per year by 2030.
Battery & Charging News
An Electrify America charging station. Photo: Electrify America
Electrify America opened its biggest charging station to date, an Orlando, Florida, location with 24 stalls delivering 350 kW each. The only hiccup for some: all the plugs are CCS, not NACS.
Seattle is making charging even easier. Its residents will help to decide where curbside Level 2 chargers are installed throughout the city with priority given to areas that lack at-home charging.
GM is closing its Detroit-based Brownstown Battery Assembly plant as it begins to re-prioritize a shift back to gas-powered vehicles.
If you're a Volkswagen ID.4 owner, listen up. VW will start limiting charging in some cars to just 80% due to a fire-risk recall starting next week.
First-gen EVs are starting to be retired, but their batteries are living on thanks to aftermarket businesses using them for EV battery replacements and stationary energy storage.
Autonomy & Tech News
The Tesla Cybercab Photo: Tesla
Rivian is making autonomy moves. Not only is it launching an early access program to its next-gen autonomy features, but it has now acquired a company specializing in 3D world models to slingshot its Universal Hands-Free driving software into the future.
Tesla finally has more monthly Full Self-Driving subscribers than it does lifetime purchases. Last quarter, Tesla reported that 75% of new car buyers in North America also coupled on a $99 per month subscription to FSD.
Waymo is reportedly getting ready to grow its fleet by 500% by the end of next year.
On its earnings call this week, Tesla confirmed that Cybercab deliveries to customers are slated to begin rolling out to customers by the end of the year. CEO Elon Musk warned that the vast majority will still be owned by Tesla, though.
Google Maps in CarPlay is getting a big AI upgrade, if you’re into that sort of thing: the Gemini AI assistant.
-Rob Stumpf
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