General Motors has begun construction of a new 12,077m2 facility, the Charlotte Technical Center, as part of a US$45m investment to aid the expansion of the company’s performance and racing capabilities.
The site in North Carolina, USA, was selected due to its location near partner racing teams and major technology suppliers and will support racing efforts across all series in which the company competes. GM states that the center will also provide more opportunities for it to recruit people in software engineering, computational science and electrical engineering.
“After more than a year of unprecedented challenges for everyone, we reevaluated our plans and found we could expand the footprint and scope for the Charlotte Technical Center to make it an even greater resource,” commented Jim Campbell, GM US vice president, performance and motorsports. “This new location and larger facility is a clean-sheet design, tailored for technology development and collaboration with our racing teams and technical partners.”
The technical center will feature an array of advanced virtual tools, including three state-of-the-art driver-in-the-loop simulators, aero development systems and software-enabled vehicle modeling technology to enable faster analysis.
The investment in the new site will allow GM to expand its capacity to process, analyze and leverage vast amounts of data, enabling its motorsport and engineering teams to optimize designs earlier in the development process alongside greater first-time quality.
“The new Charlotte Technical Center will expand GM’s engineering footprint in the epicenter of racing in the United States and will improve our engineering speed and capability in both the racing and production environments,” explained Jim Danahy, GM vice president of global safety, systems and integration. “It will be a strong hub for the racing and production engineering teams to collaborate, share resources and learn together, delivering better results more quickly both on the racetrack and in our production vehicles.”
