DETROIT, Michigan, October 31, 2025 (ENS) – General Motors has announced that in 2028 the company will introduce a next-generation centralized vehicle computing platform serving both its electric and gas powered vehicles. The move is a pivot for the company, which was poised to ramp up electric vehicle production until President Donald Trump discontinued federal $7,500 subsidies for EV buyers on September 1.
General Motors will launch the centralized computing platform and next-generation electrical architecture starting with the Cadillac Escalade IQ in 2028.
“The new design represents a fundamental reimagining of how GM vehicles are built, and how they can be updated over time,” the company said in its announcement of the new technology on October 22.
Already, more than 4.5 million GM vehicles can receive over-the-air vehicle system updates, a number growing by about two million vehicles per year. Last year alone, 1.6 million vehicles received coordinated software updates this way.
Now, the company is taking this capability farther to fashion a new approach to mobility that GM says “…unlocks new levels of performance, scalability, and software efficiency.”
The revised architecture cuts the number of vehicle modules needed under the hood, simplifying vehicle design, improving reliability, and enabling faster software updates, GM said.
GM will share software across its portfolio, both electric and gas-powered vehicles, large and small, so that GM vehicles will be always connected, awake, and available, with near-instant responsiveness to remote commands.
GM EV Sales Slow, So Are Tesla’s
In the first quarter of 2024, U.S. year-over-year growth rate for electric cars was 15 percent, compared to the overall market, which was up 4.7 percent. Year-over-year growth of electric car sales did slow compared to the 2022-2023 numbers, which rose by about 50 percent. Still, electric vehicles were 7.8 percent of the new-car market compared to 7.1 percent in the same period of 2023.
Tesla as a brand is experiencing slowing demand as shown in the company’s production and delivery report for Q1 2024. Tesla reported delivery of about 387,000 vehicles, missing its target level of 430,000.
Still, the Tesla Model Y remains the best-selling EV in the United States, and it continues to have “an outsize impact” on overall EV sales, according to Lawrence Yap, writing for the website Green Cars in May 2024.
“There are many reasons why Tesla’s numbers have fallen off. Some pundits have speculated that CEO Elon Musk’s controversial political leanings are beginning to turn off swaths of mainstream buyers, which are key to the success of the Model Y and Model 3,” Yap writes. “A more likely explanation is that, aside from the all-new and low-volume Cybertruck, the brand’s line is aging … and competition from other brands is increasing.”
On April 25, 2023, GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra said that General Motors’ electric car, the Bolt, and Bolt EUV would be discontinued at the end of 2023 to make room for GM’s “new generation of electric vehicles.”
General Motors phased the electric Bolt out of production, and its sales of electric vehicles dropped 21 percent, as the new Blazer electric SUV faced production delays and stop-sale orders.
One bright spot was the Cadillac Lyriq, which nearly quintupled sales compared to the first quarter of 2023.
Another potential bright spot is the reintroduction of the Chevy Bolt EV for 2027 at a price point that hovers around $30,000.
The 2027 Bolt designers focused on a refined, familiar look paired with the latest safety technologies, software updates, and driver-assistance features. The Bolt is shaping up to be “a practical, budget-conscious EV for everyday drivers,” GM says.
With the Blazer EV and the new Silverado EV now back in production, Yap expects GM’s numbers to grow from its roughly three percent EV share of the market.
GM’s North American President Duncan Aldred said earlier this year, “There’s no doubt we’ll see lower EV sales next quarter after tax credits end, and it may take several months for the market to normalize. We will almost certainly see a smaller EV market for a while, and we won’t overproduce.”
The Role of Tariffs
While starting on a program for producing more electric cars and trucks during the administration of President Joe Biden, GM and other American automakers had to pivot when President Donald Trump took office on January 20. Companies had to change their plans as Trump said immediately that he was going to support the use of fossil fuels, reversing the U.S. policy of working to defeat climate change by limiting the burning of diesel, oil, and gasoline.
On Friday, October 17, Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation invoking Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, imposing a 25 percent tariff on imports of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and related parts as well as a separate 10 percent on imports of buses. These tariffs will take effect at 12:01 am ET on November 1.
The 25 percent tariff on imports of medium- and heavy-duty trucks and parts applies to parts used in medium- and heavy-duty trucks, such as engines, transmissions, tires, and chassis.
Medium- and heavy-duty trucks include vehicles like large pick-up trucks.
Under a new Tariff Offset Program manufacturers using U.S. assembled medium- or heavy-duty truck parts may receive a tariff credit equal to 3.75% of the aggregate value of all trucks assembled in the United States from 2025–2030. This reflects the duty owed when a 25% tariff is applied to 15% of the value of a U.S. assembled medium- and heavy-duty truck.
This credit can be used to reduce the tariffs that truck manufacturers owe on medium- and heavy-duty truck parts.
Products subject to this tariff WILL NOT be subject to additional or existing tariffs on steel, aluminum, copper, cars and car parts, or lumber. They also will not be subject to reciprocal tariffs that the U.S. has placed on Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and India.
In an October 21 Letter to Shareholders, GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra thanked President Donald Trump for relieving the pressure of tariffs on the company.
“I also want to thank the President and his team for the important tariff updates they made on Friday. The MSRP [manufacturers suggested retail price] offset program will help make U.S.-produced vehicles more competitive over the next five years, and GM is very well positioned as we invest to increase our already significant domestic sourcing and manufacturing footprint,” Barra told GM shareholders.
Earlier this year, General Motors announced $4 billion in capital investments to onshore production at plants in Tennessee, Kansas, and Michigan over the next two years, Barra explained.
“Once these investments come online, we plan to produce more than two million vehicles per year in the United States,” she said.
“We are also investing close to $1 billion to build a new generation of advanced, fuel-efficient V8 engines in New York. Importantly, we are maintaining our capital discipline while adding this production and creating new jobs,” Barra declared.
Barra knows GM better than most other people in the automotive universe. She started working for GM in 1980 as a student when she was 18, checking fender panels and inspecting hoods, and she used this job to pay for her college tuition. Later, she held engineering and administrative positions at GM and managed its Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant.
GM Takes a Fresh Approach
Now, a new presidential administration with new goals has GM moving toward a centralized computing design that unlocks new levels of performance, scalability, and software efficiency.
The updated architecture builds on GM’s Vehicle Intelligence Platform, which launched in 2020 to allow secure over-the-air updates.
In 2022, GM unified dozens of infotainment modules into a single computing platform. The company also consolidated multiple advanced driver assistance systems into one. The new platform consolidates dozens of electronic control units into a unified computing core that coordinates every subsystem in the vehicle in real time, the company explained.
Much like a smartphone’s single, powerful microprocessor that orchestrates everything from camera to messages, this centralized approach connects every system – propulsion, steering, braking, infotainment, and safety – through a high-speed Ethernet backbone.
This has the potential to drive “dramatic change for customers,” Barra explained to the GM shareholders that hit a series of bullet points.
- – Growing to deliver 10 times more software updates for new features than our previous system.
- – Real-time safety updates in a self-driving system that reacts in milliseconds and evolves with each autonomous update – even faster than our current system.
- – 1,000 times more bandwidth for faster connectivity, richer entertainment, and future AI workloads.
Under the hood - – At the heart of the system is a liquid-cooled central computing unit powered by next-generation processors such as NVIDIA Thor. That core connects to three aggregators, serving as hubs for the vehicle’s different zones. Instead of wiring hundreds of sensors and actuators directly to the central processor, the aggregators act as translators. They convert sensor signals into a unified digital language, and route commands back to the correct hardware.
This design delivers two major advantages, Barra said.
- – Hardware freedom: Vehicle-specific components stay isolated from the software layer, so GM can swap suppliers or upgrade parts like brake actuators, cameras, displays, and other components without rewriting core code.
- – Radical simplification: The new architecture simplifies the network topology. Instead of hundreds of point-to-point connections creating complex wiring and software integration challenges, you get clean “star-network” topologies with aggregators fanning out to their local zones.
Built to Scale
With up to 35 times more AI computing power, as well as TOPS, trillions of operations per second, for autonomy, and a two-to-four multiplier boost in infotainment performance, GM’s platform is engineered with headroom as the company builds next-generation features, the GM leader explained.
“GM’s new platform is engineered to support both electric and internal-combustion vehicles. A single software and computing foundation means innovations developed for one vehicle type can be rapidly scaled across the entire portfolio,” Barra said, “accelerating feature deployment while upholding GM’s standards for safety, cybersecurity, and reliability.”
Eyes-off Driving?
General Motors says it is evolving into a new era of transportation. The company announced plans to bring “eyes-off” driving to market in 2028, debuting on the Cadillac ESCALADE IQ electric SUV.
GM says it has already mapped 600,000 miles of hands-free roads in North America, and customers have driven 700 million miles with Super Cruise “without a single reported crash attributed to the system.
“This combination of technology, scale, a decade of real-world deployment experience, and safety systems developed and tested for Super Cruise gives us the foundation to deliver the next phase of personal autonomy,” GM reasons.
Barra Welcomes a New Chapter
By combining centralized computing, software consolidation, and GM’s global scale, this architecture marks the beginning of a new chapter for the company’s vehicles, Barra told the shareholders and listed the benefits they will enjoy:
- – Cars that learn and improve throughout their lifetime.
- – Architectures that deliver real-time intelligence and faster autonomy.
- – Platforms that bring the efficiency of the digital world into the physical one.
- – Delivering 10 times more software updates for new features than GM’s previous system.
- – Real-time safety updates in a self-driving system that reacts in milliseconds and evolves with each autonomous update.
- – 1,000 times more bandwidth for faster connectivity, richer entertainment, and future AI workloads.
Barra is not the type of CEO to take a negative view of change. Instead, she took a positive tone, saying, “GM’s new computing platform will connect every GM vehicle to a smarter, faster, and continuously improving future.”
Please address questions or comments to: news@gm.com
Featured image: The 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQL. Simulated images. Production vehicle may vary. GM says the ESCALADE IQ will feature next generation electrical architecture in 2028. (Photo courtesy General Motors)
