Milestones – Cadillac CELESTIQ to be Built in Warren MI

Tech Center became a National Parks Historic place in 2015.

General Motors (NYSE GM) today announced it will invest $81 million into the company’s Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, to prepare the campus to build the Cadillac CELESTIQ, which wil be the brand’s flagship. The investment will be used to purchase and install related equipment to hand-build the CELESTIQ. Campus renovation work has already begun.

Actual details of what GM is going to sell and lease are scant. CELESTIQ’s roof is “expected to be one of the first” to feature a four-quadrant, suspended-particle-device smart glass. With this smart glass, each occupant of the vehicle can set their own level of roof transparency. The driver and front-seat passenger will enjoy a pillar-to-pillar freeform display with active privacy to help mitigate driver distraction, GM said. AutoInformed will spare you from the taillight and door hinge photos.

The CELESTIQ will be the first production vehicle to be built at GM’s Global Technical Center, the center of the company’s engineering and design efforts since its inauguration in May 1956. (Read AutoInformed.com on GM’s Dual Platform Strategy – Doubling Revenues by 2030?; GM, Qualcomm Enabling Hands-Free Driving in 2023; EVs – at $7B GM Makes Largest Announcement in History, GM CAMI – Becoming Canada’s First Full-Scale EV Plant, GM Ultium-based EVs Now Have a Heat Pump)

 The Cadillac CELESTIQ will be built on GM’s Ultium Platform, the heart and arguably the soul of the company’s emerging EV strategy, which some traditional equity analysts seem to have a hard time grasping judging from their questions on media calls. The Ultium Platform uses a common electric vehicle architecture and propulsion components such as battery cells, modules, packs, Ultium Drive units, EV motors and integrated power electronics.

GM’s suppliers will  provide what is “expected to be the highest volume of 3D printed components – more than 100 –  of any GM production vehicle.” This will include both structural and cosmetic parts, and both polymer and metal pieces.

Additionally, the CELESTIQ production facility itself will use “additive manufacturing for tooling, fixtures and gauges in the assembly process.” GM’s Additive Industrialization Center, which opened on the GM Global Technical Center campus in 2020, has made the Cadillac CT4-V and CT5-V GM’s first vehicles to benefit from additive manufacturing with parts including the shifter emblem, transmission components and HVAC ducts.