GM’s Nervous System that Enables Future Technology Adoption

 “General Motors has developed an all-new digital vehicle platform necessary for its next-generation of vehicles, EVs, active safety, infotainment and connectivity features, and the evolution of the Super Cruise driver assistance feature.” To quote their press release.

We have heard that GM has their next EV platform that will cover multiple new auto’s and that GM has their global ICE auto platform. The one thing that no one has talked about is the nervous system that is underneath these new autos.

Tesla has proven that technology can sell and that the younger generation is wanting an auto to stay current much like their smartphone and yet not be a challenge to upgrade such as some OEMs have done with requiring you to come in and get them to flash the Powertrain with a USB thumb drive or the NAV system with a new expensive DVD update.

GM has their mission and vision for a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion. To achieve this in both auto’s meant GM needed a new electronic platform.

The 2020 Cadillac CT5 will be the start of the Generals 3 year roll out to have all GM built global autos on a single new powerful electric platform. This new platform is not a thing that dealerships will be selling as most people will not care about the fact that starting with the CT5 this car will be capable of processing 4.5 Terabytes of data per hour, a five-fold increase over GM’s current electrical architecture. Depending on the system in the auto, every auto will have 100Mbs, 1Gbps and 10Gbps ethernet connections both internally and externally.

With this new electric platform, GM has also built in an encrypted Cybersecurity as a key pillar of this new architecture. The Cybersecurity has multiple protective features at both hardware and software levels reflecting GM’s push for safe and secure autos.

GM is among the first automakers with a dedicated and integrated Product Cybersecurity organization. This group is focused on insuring that every new auto GM puts out will be protected against unauthorized access to the vehicle and customer data.

GM is also chairing the Auto-ISAC (Automotive Information Sharing & Analysis Center), a public and private-sector of partners that share and analyzes intelligence about emerging cybersecurity risks for the auto industry.

GM like the Smartphone industry will make standard all software updates for their auto’s over the air enabling adoption of functionality upgrades throughout the lifespan of the vehicle with no need to come to the dealership to get them.

GM autos will have a new Nervous system, a new electric system that for some would could cause concern that things would get overly complicated. This is where GM empowered the new engineering team to think outside the box and clean sheet what it would take to for the long future road of auto tech.

According to the magazine Wired, after GM press announcement on their new electric platform, GM’s director of electrical components and subsystems Al Adams talked with Wired. Mr. Adams says this is the little-appreciated, tucked-away guts of an auto that is not noticed till it does not work. This new electrical system will roll out over the next 36 months to standardize GM’s 56 models across four brands

Mr. Adams says this is equal to having an original iPhone and trading it in for an iPhone 7 in terms of the power it will add to the autos.  This will allow a standardization of Super Cruise and other safety features to be rolled out throughout the whole global product lines.

The biggest benefit that Mr. Adams says this will do is to simplify the auto’s which today have 30 to 40 separate computers controlling a wide range of feature / functions. This is double what it was only 10 years ago. This new electronic platform will bring it back to a single enterprise multi-core computer running the whole auto. This new platform ended up reducing the amount of multiple wire strands being run reducing a noticeable amount of weight in the autos.

300 electrical engineers and computer scientist filed more than 100 patents and benchmarked the new auto cybersecurity system against defense and aviation systems with a focus on message authentication. This allows the cruise control system to know that the radar is really talking to it when it says the road is clear ahead and not some external source. Millions of miles of testing have gone into this new robust platform to ensure that the auto’s being built will last for decades through any type of weather.

To quote Mr. Adams, “Software is the Next Battleground!” in the auto war.