GM will make its own electric motors starting in 2013

GM to make its own electric motors

WHITE MARSH, Md. — General Motors wants smaller, lighter, more powerful electric motors for its cars and trucks, and the way to get them is to make them, a GM official said Tuesday at the plant where the new motors will be made.

Tom Stephens, GM’s vice chairman of global product operations, said Honda and Toyota currently make their own electric motors in Japan, but GM plans to become the first U.S. manufacturer to do so.

Customers are also demanding more affordable, reliable and efficient electric motors, he said.

“If you want to do all that, you need knowledge and to have knowledge you have to do it yourself,” Stephens said.

Stephens said the company is developing an electric motor that will be 25 percent smaller, 25 percent lighter and have 20 percent more power. That motor will enable the company to put them in products from cars to full-size pickups and sports utility vehicles, he said.

GM has been getting electric motors for hybrid and electric vehicles from suppliers.

“We need to not only buy the parts, we need to really understand them,” said Pete Savagian, engineering director for hybrids and electric motors, in a conference call with reporters ahead of Tuesday’s announcement.

The announcement also means 200 more jobs for GM’s transmission plant in White Marsh, that currently makes hybrid transmissions. GM said it will invest more than $246 million to build the electric motors. The plant will be able to produce 40,000 of the global rear wheel drive motor units, which will have two electric motors and three planetary gear sets.

This isn’t the first time GM has built electric motors. It built them for its EV1 electric car in the mid-1990s, and some of the engineers of that car worked on the new motors, Savagian said.

Savagian said GM has been quietly developing a new electric motor since 2003, and will be the first U.S.-based automaker to manufacture its own.

GM-designed and built electric motors will debut in 2013 on rear-wheel drive, two-mode hybrid vehicles, but eventually they could be placed in all-electric and fuel-cell cars.

Two-mode hybrids use a motor alongside a conventional engine to boost power and improve fuel-efficiency. Electric vehicles are powered solely by batteries and electric motors, while in fuel-cell vehicles, an electric motor is powered by a reaction between oxygen and hydrogen.

On traditional vehicles, gas fuels the engine and transmission, which power the wheels. On electric vehicles, batteries replace fuel and electric motors replace the engine.

Company officials said the plant which now has less than 200 employees once employed as many as 500. Gary Casteel, Region 8 director for the United Auto Workers Union, said employees who lost jobs will be eligible for the jobs, which he said represented the future of the industry — a sentiment shared by many at the announcement.

Gov. Martin O’Malley thanked GM employees and management for working with state and federal officials taking the “action necessary to transform our economy” and bring the next generation green jobs to Maryland.