Skip to main content

GM to start autonomous vehicle manufacturing and testing in Michigan

Following the signing of the SAVE Act legislation to support autonomous vehicle testing and deployment in Michigan, General Motors is to begin testing autonomous vehicles on public roads. GM also announced it will produce the next generation of its autonomous test vehicles at its Orion Township assembly plant beginning in early 2017. Testing is already underway on GM’s Technical Center campus in Warren, Michigan and will now expand to public roads on the facility’s outskirts. Within the next few months,
December 16, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Following the signing of the SAVE Act legislation to support autonomous vehicle testing and deployment in Michigan, 948 General Motors is to begin testing autonomous vehicles on public roads. GM also announced it will produce the next generation of its autonomous test vehicles at its Orion Township assembly plant beginning in early 2017.

Testing is already underway on GM’s Technical Center campus in Warren, Michigan and will now expand to public roads on the facility’s outskirts. Within the next few months, testing will expand to metro Detroit, which will become GM’s main location for development of autonomous technology in winter climates.

Workers at the Orion Township assembly plant will build test fleet Bolt EVs equipped with fully autonomous technology. The plant currently manufactures the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Sonic. The new equipment will include LiDAR, cameras, sensors and other hardware designed to ensure system safety, leveraging GM’s proven manufacturing quality standards.

The test fleet vehicles will be used by GM engineers for continued testing and validation of GM’s autonomous technology already under way on public roads in San Francisco and Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as part of the Michigan testing fleet.

GM has been developing its development of autonomous vehicle technology since the beginning of 2016.

In January, the company announced the formation of a dedicated autonomous vehicle engineering team and a US$500 million investment in Lyft to develop an integrated network of on-demand autonomous vehicles in the US. In March, the company announced the acquisition of Cruise Automation to provide deep software talent and rapid development expertise to help speed development.

It began testing autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EVs on the public roads in San Francisco and Scottsdale. The company has more than 40 autonomous vehicles testing in the two cities.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • C/AV technology will be ‘life-altering revolution’
    July 20, 2018
    Preparing for the challenges - and promises - of connected and automated vehicles and other emerging transportation technologies does not necessarily mean investing in actual hardware. Matthew Smith identifies eight key points that US transportation authorities need to look at. Transportation technology is moving rapidly. With the advent of connected and automated vehicle (C/AV) technology, the nation is on the verge of experiencing a major transportation revolution: a life-altering revolution akin to th
  • Interoperable electronic payment systems begin testing
    January 31, 2012
    OmniAir's Tim McGuckin writes about progress with the Electronic Payment Services National Interoperability Specification, which aims to provide the US with payment capabilities at lane level using any ETC component protocol. The OmniAir Consortium was founded to advance US national deployment of open, effective and interoperable transportation technology systems. Through its member-defined programmes, companies and individuals join to work for open standards, interoperability, third-party certification and
  • ACM to lead collaborative study on autonomous truck platooning
    September 26, 2018
    The American Center for Mobility (ACM) will lead a study which seeks to autonomously control a fleet of trucks in Colorado. The two-year project will begin at the end of 2018, followed by a second deployment in Michigan. ACM says it has worked collaboratively to identify and pool resources to help accelerate the safe deployment of autonomous controlled trucks. As part of the programme, tests will be carried out at ACM’s purpose-built facility to assess the reliability of multi-truck convoys travelli
  • MDOT V2I technology testing ‘a success’
    June 27, 2016
    The US Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) recently teamed up to test vehicle to infrastructure communications technology for Army vehicles along I-69. According to MDOT, the testing, which was the first step to eventual autonomous operations of Army line-haul convoys and included direct communications between Army trucks and roadside units deployed by MDOT, was a success. Messaging that is low in latency and