General Motors said Wednesday that it was starting to use artificial intelligence to halve the time it took to design a new vehicle to as little as two years. If successful, the initiative would improve G.M.’s chances of competing with fast-moving Chinese automakers.
BYD, Geely, Xiaomi and other Chinese manufacturers have stunned established carmakers by quickly rolling out new models packed with the latest technology. Sales of relatively inexpensive Chinese vehicles have soared in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, often at the expense of U.S., European or Japanese brands.
G.M. also said it would overhaul the computer systems in its cars and drastically cut the cost of electric vehicle batteries, which could also be seen as a response to Chinese rivals.
Sterling Anderson, G.M.’s chief product officer, portrayed the changes as an effort to make better cars. “The faster we can iterate, the better our products become,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “We are developing better products faster at lower costs.”
Chinese cars are effectively banned from the United States by tariffs and regulations. But G.M., which is based in Detroit, cannot ignore those vehicles. The company sells cars in China and is increasingly having to compete with Chinese-made cars in other countries, including Canada and Mexico.
At an event in New York on Wednesday, G.M. made the case that it will become more innovative.
Company executives said they were working on new electric vehicles that would cost not much more than gasoline and diesel cars and trucks, while going farther on a full charge. Mr. Anderson declined to say when the new vehicles will be available to buy.
To speed up development of the batteries that will power those cars, G.M. engineers used artificial intelligence to evaluate 300,000 possible combinations of chemicals and components to hasten a process that would normally take years.
G.M. is the largest carmaker in the United States, but a minor player in electric vehicles. Its Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC brands together made fewer than 10 percent of the new electric vehicles sold in the United States in the third quarter, according to Cox Automotive. Tesla remains the dominant U.S. electric vehicle brand, with more than 50 percent of sales.
G.M. scaled back its investment in electric vehicles after Congress eliminated tax credits for buyers of such cars last year. Automakers also have had less reason to sell battery-powered models because the Trump administration gutted fuel economy rules that had discouraged companies from making the big sport utility vehicles and pickups.
Mary T. Barra, G.M.’s chief executive, has acknowledged that electric vehicles will, over time, become dominant as prices fall and the technology improves.
G.M. is also consolidating the computing functions of its cars into a single device. Current vehicles typically have numerous processors controlling the engine, chassis, driver assistance system and other functions.
Combining those tasks cuts costs, uses less wiring and makes the automakers less vulnerable to the kind of chip shortages that disrupted production during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tesla’s cars have long had a centralized computer, and Chinese automakers have adopted that approach in recent years.
The more powerful computer will also manage increasingly sophisticated driver assistance systems, G.M. said. The company is aiming to offer a system by 2028 that lets drivers take their eyes off the road on divided highways.
The 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ, an electric version of the large sport utility vehicle, will be the first G.M. model to get the new system. It will be available soon afterward in other G.M. vehicles, the company said.
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