Inside GM’s Future: AI Cars, Hands-Free Driving, and Next-Gen Batteries

Hi there. Welcome to The Inevitable. This is Motor Trends Podcast, our podcast about the future of cars,

the future of mobility. Where are we going? How are we going to get there? And on this particular

episode, we are talking about the future of General Motors. Welcome to The Inevitable,

a podcast by Motor Trend. And you know how some of y'all complain that I cut off the guests a little

too frequently? Good news for you. I'm not even on this episode. Yes, it's all about me. Hello there.

I'm Ed Lowe. I'm the head of editorial Motor Trend. I'm your co-host along with Johnny

for this podcast, which is not sponsored by the way. So if you want to shoot us a note,

drop it to GM, edward.loh at Hearst.com. And yes, for this episode, unfortunately, Johnny couldn't

come with me. I went to New York early this week for what was called GM Forward. And this was a

technology focused morning, really, it was from about 8am to just after 12 noon. All about the

future of GM's products. GM CEO, Mary Barra, was there, kicked off the day, followed by GM President

Mark Royce. They had their chief product officer, this new guy, Sterling Anderson, was there. I got

to talk to exactly none of those people. But I did get to talk to a bunch of the folks who are

really in the trenches doing a lot of the hard work in different verticals. And they're more

interesting anyways. They're all very nice people, very interesting people. Well, that is correct.

And I think if we do this, well, why don't I not, I won't jinx it. I'll just tell you some of the

folks we talked to will surprise you with the order. I'll tell you who comes at the end,

though. We talked to Kurt Kelty, who's GM's battery guru. So talked about their new lithium

manganese rich battery chemistry and some of the US production announcements they had.

We talked to a guy named Ryan Seigin, sorry, Gary Seigin. Shoot, I hope that's great. Gary Seigin,

who is the connected, it's all about their new centralized computing architecture.

So that's his Boloax gives me the whole rundown on that. We also talked to our man,

Asim Kapoor, who we had on the podcast from GM Home Energy, gave us a latest update on what

they're doing with battery charging at the house. There's some big announcement on leasing the system.

And then we talked with Barris Setanak, who's of the GM Software and Services division about the

big news, which is that the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ will have eyes off, hands off, driving. So

basically level three driving. Nice. So basically you can put the car into super cruise mode,

and you don't have to be looking down the road anymore. The car is going to drive for you.

Interesting. Some very interesting philosophical decisions they made about the process,

which is super cool. That's awesome. And then we wrap with the man, the myth, the legend,

Dave Richardson, who is their head, I think is SVP of Software and Services for John Motors,

longtime Apple guy. He comes on and talks about this big announcement that's coming next year,

which is GM vehicles are going to add Google Gemini AI Assistant to all their vehicles.

All the way back to 2015, which was like, yeah, which was the wildest news. There was a last

interview of the day. It's the last interview of this episode. Should be the first, but

that's just how it how it how it ended up and all the implications of adding. I mean,

it's millions of cars are going to get an over the air update, adding a conversational

AI chatbot to the car. How I mean, they can do over the air on 2015.

We're going to hear from David Richardson all about that on this episode. So let's dive in.

I apologize. This was filmed in a very tight amount of time in a very tight space. So

I'm not sure how the audio without is good. Without Johnny, not sure how the audio or

the video is going to work out, but we tried our best. So let's let's roll tape.

Now, while people may be more familiar with our cars and pop culture, they may not know that we've

always pushed the industry forward with our technologies.

Our vision is to create a car of the future that knows you that orange that looks out for

you and anticipates your needs even before you say it's more than just a vehicle. It makes your

life easier, more screen line and more importantly, safer. That's what we're working toward at General

Motors. And so at this GM forward, I'm calling it a science fair. This is your display. This

is this is me. This is both a video podcast and an audio one. So as much as you can,

you tell us what's the big news on this centralized compute? Yeah, absolutely. So if we start over

here, this is our current generation architecture, and it's very similar to what's on most of the

vehicles on the road today. Okay, it grew over many years as we added electronic controls to

each major subsystem on the vehicle, propulsion, their own module, brakes, its own module,

infotainment, its own module. And then we slowly and improve that over years, adding more and more

capability. When you want to add a new feature, okay, you want to add a new feature to this vehicle,

it oftentimes requires you change software in three, four, five, six different places,

integrate it on that module, and then integrate it at a vehicle level with all of the modules

talking over can, right? So there's multiple steps of validation and integration and

it need to go to removing the new architecture. The big difference is all of that thinking is

now collapsed and happening in one place. So the updates happen in one place, the integration

happens in one place, and this architecture we're using across all of the vehicles. So you don't

have these nuances vehicle to vehicle, you have one core architecture, one brain that you're

updating and you're delivering to. So it allows us to do a lot faster delivering new value,

delivering fixes, delivering new features to our customers now. And one of the keys there is in the

older system to do any kind of update. You mentioned a can, a can bus, right? That's literally having

to plug it in at a dealer and a hard line versus over the air, not necessarily on this architecture,

we can update this architecture. You've got to power up all of the module update,

you've got to power up the can network. So everything is on, awake, aware and programmable,

right? This is just far simpler because you power up one. You flip one switch, you've got everything

on it, you need to update, you update it and there you are. Okay. And one of the key announcements

here was also that this system, again, you're showing the current generation, which is in all

cars, primarily internal combustion, this new system will work, you're calling it propulsion

or powertrain agnostic, right? So, internal combustion, EV, hybrid theoretically, any,

whatever GM is going to make one system. Exactly. Exactly. Because fundamentally, there's a couple

reasons. First, and we did this from day one, this was the plan as we set out to design

this new architecture. We think that the experienced people want in their cars that

is provided from the electrical architecture like this, whether it be AV experiences,

whether it be infotainment experiences, whether it be immersive experiences inside the vehicle

providing entertainment or media to the customer, that is independent of what propulsion system

that they choose, right? And so from day one, we design the architecture for it to cover the

entire portfolio. There's some nuances, you know, architecture to architecture or propulsion

system to propulsion system and how you have to cool it, etc. Like as an example, if you're

in an EV and here's the cooling ports, you know, you have coolant and you're pulling out the cold,

the big computer. If you're an EV, you can just tap into the cooling system that already exists

for the battery and grab the cool. If you're in a nice vehicle, the coolant that goes through

the engine to cool a nice vehicle is much hotter temp than what you need, right? So we actually

have to create an auxiliary cooling system and cooling loop to cool it. If it's a hybrid,

you get the same thing as an EV. If it's a turbocharged vehicle, you can tap into the

charged air cooler system and grab that coolant and do it. So there's nuances in the physical

integration, but the digital side of this is one common platform for all of you.

So why does it have to be liquid cooling versus, I mean, I'm thinking about this as a computer,

like a PC, you might have built it at home in the 90s or ever. And those were air cooled,

yellow fan on there. This couldn't have been air cooled. So just like a gaming PC and my,

you know, my kid just built a new gaming PC, right? It's recently, right?

They're all liquid cool. They're all liquid cool, right? And if you look, the reason of,

if you kind of, you know, open that thing up and look at the chip, right? The amount of energy

density to fire all the transistors in today's chip, super powerful chips, you need to liquid

full, right? It's much more efficient to liquid coolant than to air coolant, right?

So that's the reason. So we're computing is gone. Got it. So for those listening,

sorry, we're standing in front of a wall that has the current set up with what,

like a dozen black boxes or so. There's more than a dozen. I think there's 17 plus

a couple of fusing boxes, right? That collapse. That's current state. Yep. And the next generation

is essentially four different modules. A connectivity hub module, essential compute unit.

That's the big silver box. Yep. And tell us about these two aggregators I heard in a previous,

in your demo, that this essentially replaces the traditional fuse box. No more,

no more fuses as we know them in the cars of the future. Correct. Yeah. So if you look over here

and everybody's seen these in their cars, we have multiple fuse boxes. Each one is on a specific wire.

So if something draws more current than that wire is designed to the fuse, the fuse blows,

right? Protects the system. As we move to the new architecture, we have what's called

ease uses, which you can think of this as a electronically controlled piece of silicon

that is controlled via software that lives in here that turns the circuit on,

off, monitors current throughout every single circuit and can limit the current level on

an individual circuit. So, hey, I want to only allow 10 amps. You can do that, right?

So these go away. We move to sort of what we think is next and will be commonplace,

you know, in 10 years across the industry to these electronic uses that allow that take

the control. Okay. So, and then this, this hub connectivity model, this is model module,

this is where everything basically on the outside world comes into the car. You got it. You got it.

So anything you want the car to connect to, whether it be Wi-Fi, whether it be cellular,

whether it be radio, right? Every radio technology that you're connecting a car to

happens in that module there. All right. Also, if you want to connect to a device

or a tablet or anything like that, it happens through there. So that's design and that's why

it's so long because you've got multiple radios across there that are picking up any connection

that you want to make for the vehicle. It happens in that single box and not distributed across the

car. Yeah. So in one place. So ensuring 5G Wi-Fi, radio, Bluetooth, Sirius XN. Okay.

Yup. Yup. It's that GNSS, satellite position, right? Exactly. Okay. And then in the box,

the main thing though is that this is a centralized computing architecture. Yes. Can you just

recount for our lay person audience, like the headline, like what are the big benefits? Like

one is like decreased amount of wiring to the car. Is that correct? So it for sure

decreases the wiring. This whole architecture makes it simpler to build, simpler to

wire, fewer parts to install for sure. But the big reason that we're doing it,

we want those benefits for sure. The big reason we're moving, we're moving your architecture

like this is because it's fundamentally faster to deliver software to our fleet. That's,

that's the real takeaway, right? Faster deliver new experiences to our customers. Okay. And why

is this better than say a zonal architecture, right? We think it's the next step beyond zonal,

where zonal have processors that do thinking in these models, like the equivalent in a zonal

architecture would have four of these that has processing, you know, on each of the edges, right?

Fundamentally moving to a centralized compute allows more software to be pulled into the central

compute. You have to do it. And that separates really the application software on the vehicle

from the hardware on the vehicle. And it allows far more software sharing across different

vehicle types. And more software sharing across different vehicle types allows faster

deployment, better validation, higher quality, more experiences faster. Yeah. So

you're a car guy, right? Absolutely. Is this, and this I know has one of the big processors or

GPUs in here is from NVIDIA, at least for the, to support the autonomous system. Yes.

And we know like from the computing days, if you were to buy a gaming computer or something

that was graphics intensive, you were always looking for an NVIDIA graphics card, right? That was

like they were in the GVU. Right. Do you think, I'm getting a good question is, is this like the,

you know, the LS, the digital equivalent of like a Chevy, like the LS small blocks? And will

people be buying cars based on the processor within the body? Very interesting you say that.

I've actually internal, right, with my team talked about, if you think about the heritage

of the small block Chevy. Right. Okay. Which you said, you're a car guy, car guy.

And what that means to people and why people buy certain vehicles or just to get a small block

Chevy, a 350, a 300, what up, right? This in the future is where we, where we see vehicles

going and what's important in a vehicle. It's very similar in what we want to create for

customers. They're buying it to get back from the key. They're buying it to get that

capability. The engine that powers digital experiences, we want to create and we

want it to be similar to how people think about the small block Chevy and our legacy of,

you know, when it was invented in 1955, right? All right. Well, that's wild. Looks like a lot of work.

Oh yeah. It's exciting though. It's exciting. And this, this will come to consumers hands 2028.

Yes. 2028. And in the Cadillac Escalade IQ, first come in the Cadillac Escalade IQ,

and then we'll be quickly rolling in across the portfolio. We're working through the rollout plans,

but again, the power in this is getting it not only in the one vehicle, but getting it into the

fleet of vehicles and being able to deliver and deploy as a fleet. Common central platform

across the scale of our portfolio. Awesome. Yeah. All right. Well, Gary Salyan,

thank you so much. Hey, absolutely. Great to meet you.

So we're here at GM Forward, basically your science fair. And this is your display. Yeah.

Kurt, Kelty, what's your title? So I'm basically head of battery,

anything battery related at GM. Okay. And then what's the big news today from this event?

So you've got several non-batteries, which is hard to imagine. Right.

I'm really interested in the battery part of this. And so what we're demonstrating here is

our latest battery chemistry, this LMR chemistry, which is lithium manganese rich chemistry.

Okay. And a different form factor and a different battery pack design. Okay. So this is a video

podcast. So there's an audio component. So if you can walk us through this massive

battery display here. Again, for those of you listening, we're standing next to a table and it

has the battery pack from one of the trucks. It's one of the trucks. It's our biggest battery pack.

Okay. And what we've done here is the first time we're showing this to the public,

it's really a hybrid prototype where we've got our existing technology on the left side here.

And the right side is our next generation technology. And let's talk about the

existing technology. So we're on the left side. And what you can't see is some pouches in front of us.

And then an opened up battery pack showcases some of the pouches. And which chemistry is this?

So this is a high nickel chemistry. And we've got 24 pouches lined up and connected together

in a module. And then we've got the module stacked on top of each other. So it's two layers

of modules here. And then there's 24 modules total in the battery pack. And this is current

technology in like a Silverado. Correct. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So you get 210 kilowatt hours

out of this. Okay. It's massive. Yes. And it gives you 490 miles of driving range,

which is best in the market for a truck. Right. It's a lot of miles. A lot of miles.

Huge battery. We dig it. But over here on the right side, this is the new chemistry.

This is the big announcement today. Yeah. And so what you can see here is an implementation of

LMR chemistry in a large prismatic cell. The prismatic cell goes from the top to the bottom.

So it goes the full height of the battery pack. And you can see how simple it is here.

And how much the batteries take up the space as opposed to the other side with the pouch cells.

There's a lot of wasted space in there compared to what we're doing here where we've got

all these cells that look like bricks or a book all lined up next to each other.

And we've got now six modules here instead of 24. So we significantly reduce the module count.

The other thing is a per count in overall is dropped by about 50%. So we get much simpler design,

less parts, which leads to lower costs. It's better warranty issues, less things to break.

So that's on the just simple mechanical design. But the other real advantage here is the

chemistry. So this is an LMR, the lithium manganese rich chemistry, which is something we've been

developing in our labs for over 10 years now at GM. We're going to be the first to market with this

with our trucks in 2028. We're to manufacture it at our old Tim plants with our partner,

LG. The two of us are developing this together. And so what you're going to end up with here

is a chemistry and a form factor. It really achieves a low cost at a very strong range.

You're not going to have as much range as a high nickel, we're able to drive a lot of that cost out

of it. Okay, so instead of getting 490 miles, which you get in a high nickel chemistry, right?

Yeah, the current skate will go with an LMR. And we're going to get over 400 close to 420 miles

on this. We're going to be able to do it at a cost. It's similar to LRP. And LRP is the chemistry

in China. It's the affordable chemistry. If you put LRP in here, you get about 350 miles.

So that gives you a little comparison. So it's right, it's kind of right in between LRP and

the high nickel in terms of range, but it's at a cost similar to the LFP.

Okay, so let me just recap that. So high nickel current state in like a Silverado EV pickup

truck, you're getting around 490 miles of range in a pack this size. If you went to LMR,

lithium, manganese rich, you could get around 420, but at a cost of a much lower cost. Do you

have any kind of percentage? So the LFP, if you went LFP, we'd have a $6,000 savings

compared to the high nickel. And the LMR is a comparable cost to the LFP.

So it's as cost efficient as LFP, but LFP is only delivering about 350 miles of range for a pack

this size. Correct. This is what we heard Mary and Mark talking earlier about how we're able to

compete against the Chinese. And the most effective way we have in US here is by innovating,

innovating faster. We're really the first to market with this. So we're super excited

about implementing this. Okay. And just again, for those listening, we're looking at a pack

that you might have heard some of these other EV manufacturers like Tesla. They're using cylindrical

cells, pouches are used by other manufacturers. Prismatic is basically a GM sort of pioneering,

like in presenting, meaning prisms like boxes, not cylinders like bricks. Well,

that's a common form factor in the industry uses prismatic form factor. So there's

nothing new in terms of that form factor. But what we're able to do with LMR, we're able to make

this massive cell to make it this big is really unusual. If you look at other prismatic cells,

they're much smaller. And we're able to do the LMR enables us to make this big cell.

And then one of the other things that Mark talked about is the rare earth

yes issue. And there's an advantage here with LMR too, right?

There are no rare earth minerals in battery packs, just to clear that up. Okay, right.

They are in motors, magnets, things like that, but not in battery packs. Okay. Yeah. Sorry,

but then the broader picture of the sustainability and supply chain and the supply

agency. Yes. Yes. Because this has lower nickel content for that's where some of the price

savings is. Yes. So there's not savings come from reducing the nickel from that 90%

nickel of our high nickel cells down to 35% nickel in the LMR cells. So that's where we get a huge

cost reduction from that. And then we're able to leverage the existing supply chain

from the high nickel. We use that same cathode process is in fact, it's a little bit easier

than the than the high nipple. So we're able to reuse costs there as well and processing

costs. Okay. My co-host would kick me for asking the rare earth question about batteries. I should

have. No, that is a very common misconception. And we did not address it appropriately up there.

Okay. So I would, that's why I correct. I'm sorry if I said it. No, no, no. It's okay. We've

actually covered it. I just had a, it's early for me. People are often making that mistake.

But, and I'll just ask you because the other guy you talked to asked it. It's a great

question. So I'd like you to repeat it. Talk about the recyclability and the fact that

another misconception is that, well, A batteries are super expensive, which has been true,

but the cost is coming down. But two, that what are you going to do with that big hunk of

battery in the car once it's done? Like you got to put that into it, into a, you know,

a junkyard. And it's like, absolutely not. You, you, Mary and Mark talked about

a second life for batteries, all of that. Yeah. So, so first of all, the, the metals in batteries

can be a hundred percent recycled. And that's not, we, that's not downcycled. It's recycled

into other batteries. So that's the lithium. It's the, the nickel. It's the copper, the

aluminum, all that hundred percent recycled. That's the first point. The second point is

we recycle everything in our factories now. So all of our scrap that comes off our line,

any battery packs that come back from the market for whatever reason,

or fresh test in or whatever reason, we recycle all that. Now, the third thing to point out

is that batteries actually can have a second life. So if you, let's say you driven the car

for 150,000 or 200,000 miles, and you've got 80% capacity remaining, you might want to trade

up your car. Well, we can still use that in a second use application. And that's where we're

working with Redwood to use a second, second, get a second life out of these battery packs.

And we're packed, powering right now data centers out of that. Okay. All right. Well,

when will we see the, what will be the first vehicle we should see LMR in and when?

So you'll see it in 2028. The, and we'll see it in the truck applications.

Okay. So in manufacturing, old team factories, the, so it's, it'll be,

yeah, so you'll see it then. And we're going to be first to market.

All right. Yeah.

Exciting news. It is. Anything else you want to tell us about what GM's doing in the,

in the, I mean, the, the real beauty of all this is it hits all three of our

bulls that we're trying to do. We're trying to drive out costs. We're trying to improve

performance and trying to localize the supply chain. And so all three of those we can achieve

here with this LMR. So it's the first example of what you're going to see more and more from us

is how we're addressing the market and driving down costs and improving performance.

Awesome. Kurt Kelsey, John Motors, battery guru. Appreciate it.

Thank you. It's a pleasure.

Asim Kapoor, thank you so much for being back on the inevitable. Tell me what,

what are you, what's the big news here for you? Yeah. Well, first of all, it's great to see you

again. Yes. Thank you for having us. The big news is that we have gotten customers to have EVs serve

as their backup power generators. The last time you and I met, we gave you a demo and talked about

all the, the value pool. Now we have thousands of customers that are using it. Okay. And

we're going to expand the scale by giving customers the option to lease the system,

both finance, the purchase and the installation and scale. So that's what we're really doing.

And we'd love to talk about some of the features we've released, some of the things that we've

actually done for the customers to make their lives easier. Okay. Well, let's,

let's do that. That does seem like big news. So that's great. That's, that's great that

since we've talked sounds like things have gone well, successful. And the, and the

customers that have adopted the home energy solution, which, which involves

this battery module behind you, yes, controller, the bi-directional charging cable, right? Yes.

Those customers have had to essentially purchase the system. Is that correct? Okay. And

so now you're announcing leasing has, is that in response to maybe some customers that were

interested but turned, but did not end up buying the system or? Yeah. So I think the,

the price of the product is definitely, you know, consideration. So we want to make it

more accessible and lower the cost of entry for the consumer. So that's definitely, you know,

a driver there. I think the other aspect is we are bringing what we've learned to our journey

so far is that as we've deployed these systems, we're building a very robust installation network.

So bringing installer partners so we can provide more cost certainty on both the product

and the installation experience. So we want to make sure that we can, you know,

provide customer the confidence, what's it going to cost to install and how long it's

going to take to install. When you bundle those things together, the customer is looking for choices.

Hey, can I get it at a lower price point? Can I actually make a monthly payment? So the leasing

really unlocks that flexibility that the customers want in order to make a monthly

payment to be able to get into this technology. So let's, let's talk about the, the difference

between. So can you give me like, what's the average consumer who buys into the GM

home-managed system? What would they, what would they pay if they were to buy it versus leasing it?

So the cost varies by, of course, the configuration, right? It depends on the size of your home,

the type of home you have, whether the system's going indoor and outdoor. So without going into

specifics of what they may pay in the future, what I can say is that on a cool cost basis,

when you look at buying the system upfront and then paying for your installation,

we're going to unify that experience, right? You get one code, what's your cost for the

purchase and the installation. And it's very commonly done in the solar industry.

The second piece is going to be, it's based on the duration of the lease. You can pick your lease

terms. And that also, you know, changes your lease payment options, right? The monthly payment

that you make. And then the last thing I would, I would say is that in addition to

not only lowering the monthly payment, what we're also doing is partnering with

utility companies to unlock any incentives that are available to the customers. So

like for instance, with PG&E, they're offering a $4,500 discount towards the purchase of the system.

And we're also enrolling our systems into their programs. So if they offer a monthly incentive

or an opportunity to use the system to lower the impact on the grid,

we will bundle that in for the customer upfront. So bringing the incentives to the table,

bringing the installer to the table, we're taking all that complexity that the customer has

to take on, simplify it, make one monthly payment and get into the system.

So then, well, what I can see here, sort of avoiding, I just, I just want to know like,

like, there's a dollar, like, is there a volume? What's the, what's the buyer, the most popular

sort of system is roughly how much for? Yeah, so I'll be transparent.

Yeah, the system by itself entirely today, I think it's priced at around a little over

15,000. We're running a really big promotion at present, which discounts it by 20%. So the

cost of the hardware is roughly around 13,000. The average installation cost varies, but the

median is around like 8,500 or so. So for about a 2250, like $22,000 or $25,000, you can invest in

the entire system. The majority of our customers buy the full package. They want the EV and the

power bank because it gives them the most flexibility. It's also when you add in the tax

credit, the incentives that are available today on a per kilowatt hour basis, that's the most

economical. Okay. When you then translate that into a monthly payment on a lease, whether it's a

10-year lease or a longer duration lease, it's a few hundred dollars a month. So it's very,

very economical relative to what you have to pay up front to make an investment. Okay,

that decision today. I appreciate that. That was, that was what I was getting,

because I am completely ignorant as to what the lease terms would be. So these are

much longer lease terms than for a car. You're talking 10, 20, what's the high-end duration

would you do? Yeah, typically 10 is, you know, so the way to think about this is it follows the

life of the asset or the warranty on the asset. Okay. And storage power bank is where the

10-year warranty typically lies. Okay. We are definitely looking into extended warranty

options as well. So I don't have all the details worked out, but I think we're going to have flexible

lease terms, but they're definitely longer than a vehicle. And that's okay. Then,

all right, great. So we have the pricing down. So it goes from, you know, a massive potential

outlet if you're to buy it to a couple hundred bucks a month, that seems like a win. And you

can bundle this in with, if you already own a GM vehicle, is it will be available

with like GM financing or? Yes, we have a host options, whether it's GM financing or any other

third-party financer, like we're exploring all of them. We haven't finalized that yet,

so not ready to talk about that just yet, but yes. All right. And then any new features,

you talked about there's some cool stuff so you can do it out. Yeah. So a couple of key

features I want to highlight for you. I think one is when we initially released the system,

one of the first things, you know, that our teams did is work with

the third-party companies in order to integrate the energy plans. The biggest value proposition

besides resilience to power your home is the fact that can the system save you money?

Right. And so we've intelligently configured the system to allow it to power when the energy

prices are the lowest. So if you tell us where you live, like in this case, the customers

with a DTE consumer, we know what type of refunds they offer because we have an integration

on the back end with the utility companies. They can select and they can also pick their choice,

right, depending on their lifestyle. But the system automatically then chooses when to power

from the grid. And so saving money is becoming an increasingly big value proposition, especially

as the value of energy prices keeps going up, right? We've seen about 30% increase in the

West Coast, the East Coast, and its projected is going to go up by another 30% in the next

five years. So that's a big driver, a new feature that we've released. The other thing I just want

to highlight is when we initially launched the system, like we had this unified experience that

was built in, what we found is there's a very high level of app engagement. When people invest

in this technology, they have a higher propensity to go in and use our system. They are looking

at it. They're constantly touching and feeling it. They want to see how the system is functioning.

When am I saving? Yes. So they want to see how much money they're saving.

So what we've been able to use very successfully is, I think, demonstrate two things.

Beyond app engagement, one, can we do proactive notifications to the consumer? So in partnership

with the utilities, hey, there's a big storm coming. It's three days out. It can be day out.

Get ready. Now you have your system telling you, charge your battery, be ready. And so

you're prepared. Not just charge your storage battery, charge your car battery,

because if you have a SilverRDV, you've got a massive battery. You could then

use the bi-directional cable, plug it back in with this thing when you're done with the home

charging battery. And so just imagine the piece of mind you have that you're prepared.

You have that. And it's at the tip of your palm when the app is doing that.

So it's a part of the lifestyle that you're not leading. So that's one big change.

The second is we've also seen quite a bit of interest in when we have the customers

who actually invest in, say, just the high-speed charger first. They got an EV,

they got a high-speed charger. We are then using the apps to say, hey, look, the system's capable

of doing more. Have you tried this feature set? Have you seen that you can save more money?

So we are actually encouraging them to identify opportunities for them to save more money

or get ready. And that is capability that we want to bring to the energy companies,

because that is valuable to them. If they're more prepared customers,

they're customers that can go off the grid during a major event, that is resilience and

capacity that we can bring to the grid. And looking at ways we're running active pilots

with energy companies like DTE, PG&E. So that's been the biggest change. The fact that there's

high app engagement, a lot of interest, people are constantly looking at it. And more importantly,

it's just the lifestyle that people are getting into where it's the piece of mind.

One of the most common things that I get back, and I call customers often,

especially when I'm having tough days to really say, hey, what do you think about the system?

And it's all about the fact that people say, hey, look, I love the fact that I can see how much

money I'm saving. And then I get notifications telling me, let's get ready.

All right. For those listening, as he was standing in front of a display,

that's supposed to be like a giant mobile phone showing us ostensibly,

this is basically a recreation of the GM energy.

Yeah. Okay, that's right. It's actually mirrored from the phone on the screen.

I will say, when you showed the charging,

what was it? The setting. When you showed me the rate plan for Detroit, that is insane.

It's saying nine cents per kilowatt hour for off peak and 14 cents. I'll just tell you,

in California, in my house, I'm paying 36 cents. I think the national average for peak is 18.

That's right. So Detroit, you guys have really low electricity costs.

Well, let's see what the season varies by season. No, it's even, it's even better.

So before you get too excited, this is our test data.

Okay. All right.

So I don't take this for, this is the code.

Killing me.

I'm going to move to Detroit.

Yes. So I think this is illustrative to actually demonstrate what this is.

So I can confirm back for you if this is actually good data.

All right. I think that's great. This sounds great.

Great to hear that the program is successful. I think the lease option is a no-brainer.

Anything else you want to tell our audience?

Yeah. I think I would just want to highlight the fact is that we have people living in the future

today. There's a lot of, you know, anxiety around what's it going to do with my battery?

What's it going to do to the grid? And we're making it happen.

You know, we have one of the largest dealer network, the largest after service network,

and we're leading in to provide that confidence to our customers and something

kind of awesome. Well, thank you.

I am Boris Chetnok. I'm the CEO, Vice President for Product Management for Software and Services at

GM. What my team and myself and all of us team to share was our vision and direction for autonomy.

What we shared with you today was starting in 2028 with Escalade IQ.

We are going to bring the next generation of supercruz that we already have to our customers.

What's going to be the big change at that time? Today with supercruz on many roads,

close to a million miles of roads in the United States, across the United States,

and we're also available in other countries as well. You can take your hands off,

still be attentive, keep your eyes on the road, and you can drive.

And that really creates this comfort, lower cognitive load. I think you just arrived at your

destination refreshed. Our goal in 2028 with Escalade IQ is to upgrade that to a also eyes-off

experience so you can actually let the car drive autonomously on the highway and you can

just focus on what matters to you first. We're going to give you the time back.

You can catch up on work. You can be entertained. We show how you can pull up a

latest episode of Escalade on HPL Max and watch an episode of White Lotus,

or you can be just engaging with your colleagues or friends and family and have a chat with them.

So the idea is how do we create that environment of the car is driving on your behalf.

Okay. So current system is hands off, eyes on.

Correct.

And we're calling that, you guys call it Supercruise 2.0?

No, I think we call it just Supercruise. We don't have an external moniker like that.

Okay. And then in 2028, it'll be hands off, eyes off.

On highways.

Correct.

Okay. And I think it didn't, I saw the embargoed press release and it didn't

strike me until you until your demonstration and you kind of reiterated it.

You really mean eyes off. Like if a customer decides to fall asleep,

that's possible. That's allowed. Or check Instagram for an hour and completely ignore

the road. This is the condition that you think is going to be allowed.

Yeah. I mean, our goal is to create an eyes off, hands off experience on the

highways where you can, like I said, you can pull up your, open up your laptop and do email.

You can watch a show. You can watch a YouTube video and watch one of your YouTube videos

and catch up on what's going on in your podcast.

Okay.

I mean, it is the environment we're working to create.

Okay. And I think that the big, the big thing that you talked about,

which I was hoping to explore is, I think it's important, you GM, your team,

there's a philosophical, you're making a pretty strong statement here, which is with eyes off,

you believe the vehicle has to have the intelligence and the capability to deal with any

situation on a highway. There's going to be no hard handoff while the system is engaged.

Yeah. I think it's still, of course, early to get the exact specifics of moments of handoff.

But I think what we show today is we want, we are working to create a system that is designed to

make millisecond decisions. We as a human, an example will be if you're driving at 70 miles an hour,

a good attentive human has probably one and a half to two seconds of reaction time.

We want to create a system that can act in milliseconds.

So increase the safety of your drive. Second, our goal is also to make sure that this

moments of handoffs are gracefully designed. Because we said we're going to start on the

highways. So that means there is your own rap and off rap moments. And then we showed in our demo,

if you sat in the car, we will gracefully give you a heads up and say, Hey,

you're coming to the one stretch of the ride, where we know how to operate

in X minutes or X 100 feet, you're going to be on an off ramp. Please now get ready to take over.

So we are working to design this type of engagement, disengagement and all those moments.

But it's still too early to share the exact choreography in exact details.

Okay. But in the demos you showed two scenarios. One where there's a motorcycle

passing on the right on the left hand side, cut sort of cutting aggressively across,

and then a potential but avoided deer strike scenario. And both of those situations,

the driver was not taking over. The idea is the vehicle handles it completely.

So can you just walk us through like let's let's take that avoided deer strike.

The vehicle senses this creature on the roadway and pulls over or sorry, slows down. I'm watching

actually slows down as the animal scampers away. That's right. You the system will do that or even

in that maybe a more dramatic case, even pull you off the road and stop. I mean, that's the

thing. Again, you know, let's talk about what we show today. The goal of our demonstration was we

showed why we believe we're building a system that has multi layers of sensing the world.

Cameras, which are great because they give you a very wild field and a 360 view of the world.

But it works great in good weather. I can see all the way up to four football fields ahead.

Then we layer on top of that radar, which can penetrate through fog or rain can let's say detect

a debris that your eyes or a camera camera is just a super eyes cannot detect what the radar can.

And then you layer on top of that the LiDAR. Now the LiDAR is creating a millimeter specific

depiction of the world point cloud or point cloud well said. And now we fuse all of those.

So all of a sudden we created a super human that senses the world much better than you would.

So that fusion of that inputs, married with the brain, the intelligence and the models that we're

going to have will handle the situation appropriately. And then of course we will go

through the specifics of if then, if then, if then what cases. But today we show a sudden

experience like a deer jumping in front of the highway and your car doing a

decelerated evasive manure maneuver is absolutely the art of the possible. And that's what we're

working on. Okay. And I, and we talked to your colleague Gary Seigen about not just the sensor,

not just this cool LiDAR that's on the top, the radar you mentioned, the cameras,

but it's fundamentally tied to the central computer architecture that you'll be putting

in the vehicle in 2028, right? This is, you can't have one without the other.

That's the way we want to kind of bring the low technologies together in our launches.

Because the next generation electrical and compute platform that we shared also gives us

a higher compute capabilities and also gives us not just for autonomy for all other use cases

enough capacity and headroom. And finally it just accelerates our speaking innovation,

because you probably saw it was very vividly depicted that one central unit replaces

13 modules and probably hundreds of other tasks in one central compute. And it is

easier to update, easier to scale. And so therefore this type of use cases

definitely benefit from a more elegant design. Okay. And then I went to

Nvidia GTC earlier this year and when the GM partnership was announced and one of the announcements

was on manufacturing and the other side was the autonomous vehicle roll. So and I heard Drive

Thor is in this, will be in the vehicle specifically for Supercruise or is that today

we didn't kind of get into the exact spec details of what sensors said, what compute,

et cetera. But you know, when we're ready to share more, I'll make sure you hear first.

Okay. And then I asked this question again, but you told me a great question. So I'm going to

ask it again for our audience. You know, the sensor fusion, the fact that you're losing

LiDAR as well as radar, of course, different from other manufacturers Tesla obviously is vision only.

GM has also been very upfront and forward about adopting the Google suite of technologies,

Google built in Android automotive. Google also bought Waze. I'm a huge Waze fan and Waze's big

thing is that the cars are essentially networked. You know what you know what traffic hazards are

coming because the network knows in a future post 2028 when Supercruise is available LiDAR is

everywhere. Will the cars talk to each other and tell you, Hey, there's a hazard ahead

and you're going to need to take the wheel or you know what I'm saying, like in the same way

that Waze offers. I don't have anything like specific to share to that. But one thing we are

going to absolutely do is we're going to confuse that that's the one benefit of our cars, right?

They all have on star and on star is how we connect our cars to the world. So we will tap

into all possible source of data to kind of keep your knowledge of the roads fresh.

But I don't have a specific feature to talk about at this point.

Okay, all right.

Okay, well, there's those awesome to chat with you.

Same here.

Hope to have you on the notable soon. We go into greater depth, but this is very cool.

Yo, I have one last question.

Go for it.

The lights, the lights being turquoise.

Yes. California doesn't allow, but you don't only have to be white or yellow

on forward facing, otherwise you look like an emergency vehicle. I know this is a concept,

but how important is it to have?

I think you have answered yourself.

Okay. Well, but is the point to show off that this car's underway under it's not show off.

It's a I think there is a debate around emerging conventions.

Should the vehicles convey to the outside world that they're autonomous or not.

But as you know, there is no regulations or standards, etc.

It's that's why I also was very clear that this is an early design study.

Yep.

And these are still too.

There's a lot of to be debated design choices.

So I wouldn't take this as this is the set direction or this is the final direction.

And you know, there's going to be interesting debates around what's going to be

expected or required.

So let's see how the emerges.

It's a low key flex.

Awesome.

I appreciate you guys again.

Great questions.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Dave, you're our last interview today.

We just saw the GM forward science fair, as I've been calling it.

Yeah.

Pretty cool.

Great.

I'm going to get your impressions at the end.

But what's the big news that you announced today regarding AI?

Yeah.

So we announced a number of things, but specifically in my air, we talked about how in 2026.

So next year we're bringing conversational AI to our vehicles with Google Gemini.

Okay.

For the layperson or for somebody who's driving a GM vehicle right now, like say a new 2025

GM vehicle that has Google built in already and they know that they can say,

hey Google, you know, navigate me to the air Starbucks or hey Google, tell me a joke.

What's what's going to be the big, the big difference?

Yeah.

The big difference I think is what really comes from the power of large language models.

So if you've used large language models like chat, GPD or Google Gemini,

you know that they understand context, right?

They aren't particular about how you phrase things with the language you use.

They can understand accents, the ways of speaking.

And so I think what you're going to see is when we bring that into the vehicle,

it's going to feel a lot more conversation and natural.

It's going to have that context so that you can do more things in the vehicle

than kind of what I would say is a little bit more canned interactions

that you have to deal with a lot of the voice control.

Okay.

They have a robotic, like if you don't get the word precisely correct.

You don't get it quite right or whatever the keyword is.

It doesn't understand you.

And I think a lot of people who have used voice assistance in cars,

myself included, have had it fail a few times and it's frustrating

and so it sort of turns you off.

Maybe you don't use it as much.

I think when you use large language models,

it feels a lot more like you're talking to an actual human

and they understand you and it's far more forgiving

and you get the results that you need.

So I think bringing that to the vehicle is going to be a big unlock

for how you use voice in the car.

Okay.

I mean practically speaking, when you're in the car,

is it a button push on the steering wheel?

Is it the Hey Google prompt?

Is it, I'll tell you, currently I'm in a Tesla

that has both the vehicle assistant and then GROC on board,

but it's two mode.

I have to like short push to get the car to do something

and then long push to talk to GROC,

which doesn't do anything in the car.

Like it doesn't.

Right.

So what's kind of the user interface for doing that?

I don't think we've shared really a lot of those details

today on that.

You know, I will kind of defer and come back.

It'll maybe come back to you on that one,

but certainly our intent is that the mode of interaction

should be seamless and it should be intuitive.

I've also told people, some people say like,

I don't want voice in the car and that's fine.

We were going to continue to design the cars and the interfaces

so that you have different modes of using it.

We just think that voice is going to be an additional

aspect on top of that.

Okay.

Yeah. In 2026, across, is it every vehicle that current,

I mean, every vehicle currently runs Google built in?

Right.

So it'll be available through an OTA over there update.

Okay.

I believe and so it's not just the new vehicle,

it's not just 2026 vehicles.

It's going to go back multiple years,

I think all the way back to 2015 vehicles.

I don't know the exact specific for where that cutoff is,

but the intent is to bring it to as large the car park

as existing vehicles as well as our new ones

as we possibly can.

Really the only limitation is,

is do you go back in time so far that you don't have

the basic hardware requirements to run it?

Other than that, it will come through an OTA.

This is burying the lead.

Like I didn't realize, I thought it was starting in 2026.

Yeah, yeah, sorry, we were clear on that.

In 2026, that capability will roll out across the car park.

All the way to 20 back to around,

I believe around 2015, I don't hold me exactly on that date.

But what would be the hardware limitation?

Basically, if we just don't have the compute hardware

to run that headroom, there's also some

compatibilities potentially with the Google Gemini application

and its software, whether it can run on the physical hardware itself.

Again, also some of the OTA capabilities,

if you go back far enough, being able to do sort of those larger,

more advanced OTAs or more challenging

because of the vehicle architecture we had at the time.

Okay, yeah.

Wow, okay.

So if you're a current GM owner of a vehicle

that's around 2015 and newer,

they should expect to see sometime in 2026,

what, an email or a text, like an alarm

or an in-car notification that will tell them

that the update is available?

Yeah, so it'll be an OTA update

and as part of those updates,

it'll have a list of the features coming out

and this will be a majorly highlighted feature

that's coming to your vehicle.

And you click install and then there it is.

I'm sure we'll have other ways and venues

where we'll advertise and make this more visible to people

so they can expect and get excited about it.

Interesting, okay.

Yeah, I think it's pretty cool.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't, I thought it was like,

okay, so if you buy a new car and you get this,

but I don't know, apparently.

We're bringing the value to existing car owners

all the way back for quite a while.

Residual times.

Yeah, absolutely.

Uh, that's cool on my mind.

Okay.

Good.

Mission accomplished.

So let me just run this by you too

because you're now two years, two, a little over two.

A little over two years and the decision about

Google built in basically walking away from

CarPlay predates you.

Projection, basically.

Yeah, CarPlay predates you, right.

And I was struck by what we just did,

our SUV of the year competition.

And I drove 44 different vehicles

and in about two and a half days.

It's a lot of driving.

And I logged that more than half of them

from all different manufacturers at Google built in.

And I was like,

I'm pretty clear who's won the war here

in terms of a dominant operating system.

Is that true?

Is that your perception?

I mean, look, I think Google has invested a lot

in not just projection, correctly.

Like they built a bunch of libraries

and applications and frameworks

that let you integrate more into the vehicle

as opposed to completely giving over the screen

real estate or the experience to them.

And so I think that's why you see it adopted so much.

I also think with things like Google Maps and Navigation,

people just have come to expect that as standard.

So it makes sense.

I think Google also has a track record of open source

and kind of modes of collaboration.

So I think that combination

is why you're seeing it so much.

And it's been valuable for us as well.

I understand.

But given your prior employer

and the many issues right there,

it must be a little bit of a...

Or are you like...

Well, no.

You personally vastly prefer

one system over another?

Or...

You know, look, I think for as long as I'm going to be around,

I'm going to be a fan of Apple and Apple's products.

I think they do a ton of things really well.

And that's not always the same overlap space

with what Google does well.

And I think in the car space

for the things that GM needs,

Google has really had a great focus there.

I certainly understand people's love

and desire for car play.

But I think as we've talked about in the past,

that's not the direction we need to go

in terms of being able to own

and control the user interface

and the experience in the car.

So I don't want to comment too much

around their business models,

but I think their focus has been a little bit different

in how they've tried to tackle a vehicle.

That's my sense.

That's fair.

I was struck by how, you know,

believe me, on staff at Motor Show,

we are a little bit too much on the car play side.

I have to actively tell folks that,

guys, you can't put the phone away

or let's get some Android phones

that we have to really,

to fairly evaluate the vehicles.

You have to just,

you have to use the native system.

I think that's the big win here

is that the Google built-in system is so good.

It is, I think,

it is very competitive

with what car play delivers,

but the chief,

I think the point that everyone stumbles over

is eventually you have to pay for the service.

Whereas car play, it's free, so to speak,

in that it comes on your phone

and you're just walking.

Yes, so, you know,

where we're going

and the way we're building is

we're building a lot of stuff in-house,

we're partnering with some aspects,

but at the end of the day,

what we're trying to deliver

and we're going to deliver

is a native experience for GM vehicles

that we only control,

we control the customer experience.

There'll be aspects of that,

maybe for additional features,

which will be subscription-based

and on top of that,

but kind of that core capabilities,

whether that's Google Maps

behind the scene or whatever,

that should be really transparent to the user.

In the same way that,

you know, if you have a phone today,

it's got a lot of different apps

and technologies on it

and you can kind of mix and choose

what you're paying for,

what you're not,

what comes bundled with it.

So that kind of flexibility,

I think,

is what you're going to see

in the vehicle as well.

Okay, all right.

How of the...

This is my second to last question.

Sure.

How has it been at GM now

and now you've been there two years?

Like, what's probably the biggest

revelation or change for your company?

You know, I say,

I've really enjoyed my time here so far.

It's been quite a learning experience.

You know, I don't think,

before I joined GM,

I really appreciated

how much engineering and complexity

goes into a vehicle,

its design,

its manufacturing,

safety, critical, regulatory.

So that's been a really exciting journey for me.

It's understanding how to take software

and narrow it into that world.

I would say as well,

like the company itself,

I'm very impressed with

how open and how hard they're pushing

with a technology transformation.

Those things are really challenging

and it's really hard to do.

And the fact that the company

is bought in

and is fully behind this,

I think it was really impressive for me.

It continues to be that way

with very martial leadership.

So that, for me, has been a fun ride

to be a part of.

And, you know, at the end of the day,

what I like doing is building

technology that gets in people's hands.

You know, it's one of the reasons

I like being an Apple.

It's also why I like being at GM

and, you know, growing up in the Midwest,

growing up with GM cars everywhere.

It's pretty great to ship software that,

you know, is really in people's hands

and making a difference in their lives.

Cool. Last question,

bringing it back to this Gemini

conversational AI

coming to GM vehicles in 2026.

For you, for you, maybe personally,

what's like the big win?

What's if like a customer says,

will you overhear them and line up or start?

I just did this in the car.

Like, what's the thing where you're like,

no, that's gonna be so cool?

Yeah. I mean, I think the big one for me is

just if you see people talking about

that capability in a car,

talking about our vehicles,

but also, like, you know,

I think there's a big unlock with

voice companions and assistants inside,

inside of the vehicle.

And I'll be excited when that's really what people do.

Like, if you see people get in a car

and instead of reaching for a button

or something like that,

they're talking to it

and they're getting really value out of it.

That for me means, like,

it's really landed and it's been successful.

Yeah. Maybe.

As opposed to a novelty way,

like you try it out or something,

or like in a pinch, you try it.

If it's really becomes, like,

for many people,

their primary way with interacting with the car,

that's pretty cool.

All right.

Or I can see in 2028,

you get into an escalated IQ,

set the nav,

put the seat back.

Yeah.

Talk to your AI,

like it's your therapist for a couple hours.

Well, I don't know.

I don't know if bringing a companion

is what we're going for.

I think, you know,

we've been very clear,

like, you know,

it's about being an AI assistant

and what's valuable in the car.

I'm sure people can think of

a whole bunch of use cases

as they do for that,

but really we're,

we want to bring that value for the vehicle.

And I think there's a lot of head room for that.

That hasn't been realized yet.

Awesome.

Well, thank you for your time.

You bet.

Thanks for being here.

Busy day.

I know.

We're the lot.

Really exciting though.

Put us to the winner.

Lots of great stuff.

So I appreciate the time.

Yes.

Good to talk with you.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right.

So that's it.

That you heard it all from,

from all of the smartest people

in General Motors.

Thanks for watching this episode of the Inevitable.

We'll be back next week.

So catch you then.

Inside GM’s Future: AI Cars, Hands-Free Driving, and Next-Gen Batteries

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