GM Is Building New V8s, EVs, and Self-Driving Cars at Once. It’s Vehicle Boss Told Us How

General Motors’ executive team just laid out the iconic automaker’s future road map while placing some big bets on technology.

On the latest episode of The Drivecast, Jaclyn McQuaid, who is the senior vice president of vehicle products at General Motors, sat down exclusively with The Drive for a candid discussion about the future of General Motors including a new centralized electrical architecture that will underpin its next-gen EVs and gas-powered vehicles, product development accelerated by the use of AI, a clean reboot of OnStar, next-gen batteries, and eyes-off autonomy.

General Motors is out to prove its decades of experience, which has given it troves of data, can be used to its advantage as it competes with smaller, newer players. The implementation of AI will, according to GM executives, cut vehicle development time in half while also streamlining manufacturing processes. But the use of AI will go far beyond moving internal teams from working in a series arrangement to a parallel setup.

General Motors is rebooting OnStar and morphing it into a personal AI assistant. That feature will extend beyond the car itself as GM kills off its individual brand smartphone apps and merges the owner experience into a new OnStar smartphone app in 2027. Then, in 2028 a new clean-sheet electrical architecture built around a central compute unit will arrive in the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ. With it will come a new hands-free eyes-off driving system that will first be limited to highways before expanding to more roads. The system will quickly expand to GM’s gas-powered light-duty trucks. Eventually, the goal is for your truck to run errands without you. All of this sets the stage for GM’s next-generation EVs, which will use LMR batteries that are said to be less expensive than today’s NMC batteries while being more energy dense than LFP batteries.

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Full Transcript

Joel: Jaclyn, you lead and are responsible for GM’s overall portfolio of products. And at one point, you were the chief engineer of HD pickup trucks, before that you were in charge of seats, brake systems, exhaust, NVH, and handling. That’s a wild career. How did you get from testing seats and and proving HD pickup trucks to now you’re you’re basically leading the portfolio of GM products? Like walk me through that transition. That’s crazy.

Jaclyn: Yeah, so first 20 or so years of my career through various areas in engineering, you’re right, exhaust, tire, wheel, brakes, spent some time with seats. I actually spent some time with global purchasing and supply chain, learning that side of the business, and ultimately ended up as the chief engineer for heavy duty pickup truck. Actually, General Motors had never had a chief engineer of heavy duty pickup truck before that time. Heavy duty pickup truck had always been on the same architecture as light duty. It had a stiffer spring, it had a bigger prop, but it was effectively a beefed-up light duty. This was when we said, “No, we’re going to do a unique architecture for heavy duty truck, and we want a chief engineer to run heavy duty pickup.” And so I came over and I did that. Did that for about three years, and from there became an executive chief engineer. So I had midsize truck, medium duty truck, our beloved G-van, and then ultimately, our entire full-size truck portfolio including the full-size SUVs. So in total, about seven years being a chief and an executive chief across really all of our truck portfolio. From there, I went to Europe. I moved to General Motors Europe. I was president and managing director of General Motors Europe for a couple years, and it was really re-entry into the continent. We left in 2017. And so, really reimagining, blank sheet of paper, reimagining how would General Motors re-enter this continent. Did that for a couple years, was brought back to run Buick and GMC. So I ran sales, service, and marketing for Buick and GMC, two brands that I dearly love. And then got a call asking if I’d be willing to come back to my roots in product and run all of the vehicle products. And that was, has been for the last six months, really interesting. I’m a truck girl at heart, and so learning performance car, getting getting my fingers a little bit as much as Tony will let me into Corvette and Blackwing and some of the some of the areas that I haven’t experienced before, it’s been really fun.

Joel: So, it’s funny you mention Tony, obviously, you know he was just on the podcast. We’re a fan. Obviously, we’re a fan of the Blackwing. Blackwing was our car of the year last year, was our sports car of the year. We’re big Blackwing fans. But I also am curious, so does that mean, would you say the HD trucks are kind of like your baby? Like are you a truck girl? Is that your passion?

Jaclyn: Very much so. Learned how to drive on an ’82 Suburban. Body-and-frame trucks has been my passion. It was interesting, I became the chief engineer of heavy duty trucks, and I was 39, 40, and it’s kind of like, crap, now what do I do? I’ve kind of reached my pinnacle. I better find a new pinnacle. And so started to really look at what’s next, wanted to stay with trucks as much as possible, and that&#

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