New Ecotecs ‘Huge Piece' of Engine-Consolidation Effort, GM VP Says

PONTIAC, MI – General Motors Vice President Steve Kiefer says a new global small-engine program will go a long ways to meeting the automaker’s engine-architecture consolidation goals, a plan expected to yield significant cost savings.

“It’s a huge piece of it,” Kiefer, GM’s top powertrain executive, tells WardsAuto. “This family will cover one-quarter of our (vehicle-production) volume.”

The family of 3- and 4-cyl. Ecotec engines, ranging in displacement between 1.0L and 1.5L, consolidates three GM engine families into one. The engines will make their way into five GM brands and 27 models by the ’17 model year. They will account for roughly 2.5 million engine installations during that timeframe, and output from five global assembly facilities will reach 10,000 daily.

GM said in June 2013 it wants to consolidate its engine architecture use overall to 10 from 15 by 2018.

The automaker has not put an exact dollar amount on the savings the engine-architecture consolidation would provide, but it is expected to be significant because using common parts and components drives purchasing scale. It also cuts spending on extra engineering for a single product sold in multiple countries, with varying consumer and regulatory demands.

Performance improves, too, because engineers design one part for a vehicle instead of multiple variants.

The Ecotecs will put GM’s U.S. fleet well on course to meeting 2017 fuel-economy and emissions regulations, Kiefer says. Automaker fleets must achieve an average of 34.1 mpg (6.9 L/100 km) by model-year ’17, up from 31.3 mpg (7.5 L/100 km) in ’13.

“This positions us very well,” he says. “Ít should provide us vehicles with industry-leading efficiency and industry-leading refinement, and that’s what it all will be about selling vehicles in 2017.”

Kiefer also reveals today that between upgrades begun at global GM Powertrain engineering facilities in the past two years and those planned for the near future, the automaker will invest $1 billion into engine and transmission R&D tools. The investment plays a key role in GM implementing common engineering processes and tools across its various powertrain centers worldwide.

“We’re commonizing on the absolute, industry-best dynamometer equipment, test facilities, simulation equipment and optimization equipment,” he says. “But it’s also an upgrade to the industry standard and we are doing more of that than any car maker in the world. We will have the best facilities in the world.”

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