A decade ago, General Motors had powertrain engineering and development facilities scattered at locations all over southeast Michigan. The automaker also had a big chunk of property in Pontiac, Mich. that was formerly home to the eponymous GM car brand. Nearly 20 years after building the last Fiero in Pontiac, GM decided to raze most of the existing buildings on the site in order to create a new global powertrain engineering center which opened in 2008. GM has now completed that consolidation with the opening of the new 111,420 square foot Powertrain Performance and Racing Center (PPRC).
With the addition of the racing engine department to the Pontiac campus, GM has invested more than $200 million in a facility capable of designing, building and testing complete propulsion systems for every type of GM-branded vehicle. The engineers and technicians in Pontiac are working on everything from the battery-powered Chevrolet Bolt to heavy-duty trucks to the Corvettes that have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans GT class eight times in the last 16 years to the hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that are expected to hit the road by 2020.
The opening of the PPRC marks a transition of the of work that was formerly done in a leased facility in Wixom, Mich that was also home to the Performance Build Center. Until 2014, GM hand-built high-performance engines for the Corvette Z06 and ZR1 as well as the GT race engines at the PBC. The Z06 engine line has now been relocated to Bowling Green, Kentucky adjacent to the Corvette assembly plant. Z06 customers can now go there to build their own engines and then seem them installed into their car on the assembly line.
The PPRC will be responsible for development of all GM racing engines including the R07 NASCAR V8, the COPO Camaro drag race engines, Corvette C7R, and the twin-turbo V6 used in the Cadillac ATSV.R. By the time all of the equipment from the outgoing Wixom facility is moved into the PPRC in July, there were will be 82 staff involved in design, fabrication, assembly, testing and calibration of race engines.
Having the PPRC co-located with the rest of GM’s global powertrain engineering staff will further enable the racing staff to tap into the engineering resources available as well as enable movement between production and racing assignments for the staff.
“Motorsports is a key component of developing a culture of winning within GM,” said Dan Nicholson, vice-president of global powertrain development. Nicholson echoed the late Soichiro Honda when he highlighted the need for engineers and technicians to quickly find robust solutions to improving durability, performance and fuel efficiency in racing. Those skills are equally important in production engineering, so rotating staff through motorsports programs helps throughout the operation.
In addition to the labs and work areas in the PPRC, GM has a large lobby area with racing displays and meeting areas that can be used as an event location by groups of up to 125 people from within GM or outsiders such as local groups or car clubs.
The new PPRC building is not entirely dedicated to motorsports. Adjacent labs on the same floor house teams working on gear development and electric motor design. Elsewhere in the 645,000 square foot, Pontiac powertrain facility, more than 4,000 staff of working on creating all aspects of the propulsion systems for future including gasoline and diesel engines, and conventional, hybrid and electric drive systems. One entire wing has eight dynamometer cells dedicated to testing electrified drive systems such as the drive units for the Chevrolet Volt, Malibu hybrid and the upcoming Bolt EV.
Another section is focused solely on fuel cell development and includes clean rooms for fabricating cells and coating machines for applying the catalyst. Prior to moving to Pontiac a few years ago, GM’s fuel cell development was based near Rochester, NY, home to Kodak. GM’s head of fuel cell development Charlie Friese explained that unlike battery electrode coating, the process used for fuel cells is more like photographic film manufacturing and a number of veterans of the one-time film giant are now working on his team.
Across from the cell fabrication are rows of stands for testing everything from individual cells to stack modules to completely assembled stacks. On display was was the fuel cell stack from the 2007 Project Driveway Chevrolet Equinox and the second-generation stack that GM began testing in 2010. That second generation stack was about half the size and weight of the Equinox unit and reduced the platinum requirement from 90 grams to just 27 grams. The next-generation stack that GM is currently co-developing with Honda was hidden from view but Friese said they are targeting just 7 grams of platinum which will significantly reduce the cost. That system is slated for production by 2020.
When the the Pontiac powertrain center was being conceived a decade ago, one of the goals was to drastically improve the testing efficiency. To that GM and supplier AVL developed a new method for loading engines into dynomometer cells. Traditionally, the process for installing an engine in a test cell took about three days. That’s three days the test cell could not be used for actual testing.
GM and AVL developed a pallet system that is self contained with all of the sensors, wiring and connections to the engine. Engines are now installed on a pallet in a centralized area in a process that takes about two days and doesn’t use up a test cell. When a cell becomes available for running a test, the entire pallet can be lifted on an air cushion and slid into a cell. Clamping down the pallet, bolting the driveshaft to the dynamometer, hooking up the quick connects for coolant, fuel and data acquisition now takes about 20 minutes and then it’s ready to start a test. GM now does more testing of more types of powertrain than ever before and does it with fewer test cells than required previously thanks to such efficiencies.
The Pontiac powertrain center is one of eight powertrain engineering facilities that GM operates globally, but as the global headquarters it is by far the largest and most capable. As the issues that engineers have to deal with in terms of emissions, fuel efficiency and durability get increasingly complex, having all of these resources located in one facility will undoubtedly help GM on the street and on the track.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/02/03/new-racing-center-completes-general-motors-powertrain-engineering-consolidation/
2016-02-03T15:11:00+00:00