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3Din30: How Its Made – the Evolution of Tooling
🚙 UVeye Series D Funding Round Tops $100 Million for Major Expansion in U.S.
UVeye, a pioneer in the development of automated vehicle-inspection systems for the auto industry, has secured $100 million in additional funding to support major new sales and manufacturing initiatives in North America. The company’s recently completed Series D investment round was led by Hanaco VC, a venture-capital firm based in New York and Tel Aviv with $1.5 billion in assets under management.
Series D funding will be used to start production of UVeye inspection systems in North America, support further sales growth in the U.S. and fuel new-market expansion efforts.
GM Ramps Up Effort to Bring Customers Seamless Software Experiences Through Unified Automotive Standards
General Motors announced today that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open source software foundations. It has also contributed “uProtocol” as a starting point for greater standardization, enabling increased software productivity across the automotive industry that can lead to easy-to-use, software-enabled customer experiences. This protocol aims to speed up software development by streamlining the creation of software that is distributed across multiple devices within vehicles as well as across the cloud and mobile.
GM will participate in the Eclipse Foundation’s Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Working Group, which is focused on accelerating innovation of automotive-grade software stacks using open source and open specifications developed by and for a growing community of engineers and member companies. Collaborators on GM’s Ultifi software platform including Microsoft and Red Hat, as well as multiple other automakers, participate in the group.
General Motors and Samsung SDI Plan to Invest More than $3 Billion to Expand U.S. Battery Cell Manufacturing
General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) and Samsung SDI announced today they plan to invest more than $3 billion to build a new battery cell manufacturing plant in the United States that is targeted to begin operations in 2026. The plant will have more than 30 GWh of capacity and will bring GM’s total U.S. battery cell capacity to about 160 GWh when it is at full production. The companies plan to jointly operate the facility, and it is projected to have production lines to build nickel-rich prismatic and cylindrical cells.
🔋 Nanoramic Laboratories and General Motors to Collaborate on Cost and Sustainability of Lithium-ion Batteries for Electric Vehicles
Nanoramic Laboratories (“Nanoramic”) today announced that GM Ventures, the venture capital arm of General Motors Co. (NYSE GM), has made a strategic investment in a leading energy storage and advanced materials company, Nanoramic. The collaboration focuses on joint development and application of Nanoramic’s proprietary Neocarbonix® at the Core electrode technology for EV lithium-ion batteries, which targets improvements in EV battery cost, efficiency, and sustainability.
⛏️🔋 GM Leads $50 Million Funding Round in EnergyX to Unlock U.S.-Based Lithium Supply for Rapidly Scaling EV Production
Energy Exploration Technologies Inc. (“EnergyX”) and General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) today announced that GM Ventures is leading a $50 million Series B financing round in EnergyX, and has entered into a strategic agreement to develop EnergyX’s lithium extraction and refinery technology. The collaboration is focused on unlocking the North American supply of lithium, a critical material for EV batteries, by using EnergyX’s innovative process to maximize efficiency while improving sustainability for GM’s rapidly scaling EV production.
EnergyX’s direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology portfolio can make lithium metal directly from brine and potentially in anode-ready form for EV batteries, which enables more cost effective and sustainable lithium recovery to unlock a vast lithium supply chain in North America that may otherwise be unviable.
U.S. Steel Signs Supply Agreement With General Motors For U.S.-Sourced Sustainable VerdeX Steel
United States Steel Corp. will supply General Motors \with its advanced and sustainable steel solution called verdeX steel. The steel is manufactured with up to 75 percent fewer emissions compared to traditional blast furnace production1, is made with up to 90 percent recycled content and is endlessly recyclable without degradation.
U.S. Steel’s verdeX steel will be manufactured at Big River Steel, a LEED Certified facility that also meets the ResponsibleSteel Standard site certification, along with a new advanced technology mill under construction in Osceola, Arkansas. The steel produced at the Big River Steel facility will begin shipping to GM manufacturing facilities starting this year.
🖥️🚙 General Motors signs deal with GlobalFoundries for exclusive U.S. semiconductor production
The chip manufacturer will establish dedicated production capacity exclusively for key auto suppliers of the Detroit automaker at its semiconductor facility in upstate New York, according to the companies. Caulfield said the exclusive production for GM is expected to take two to three years to really ramp up.
MycoWorks & General Motors
Biotechnology company MycoWorks announced today its newest investor GM Ventures, the investment arm of General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), and their long-term agreement to co-develop Fine Mycelium™ materials for potential use in a range of applications within automotive design. MycoWorks’ collaboration with GM marks the exploration of its entry into one of the largest end-use markets for leather and demonstrates the significant opportunity to create more sustainable materials for the automotive space.
The Power of Predictive Maintenance
“Getting to the level of predictive maintenance is an evolutionary process for manufacturers, regardless of their specialty,” notes Will Healy III, global business strategy manager at Balluff Inc. “Right now, there is great interest in retrofitting equipment with sensors to perform condition monitoring as a means to implement predictive maintenance. The next step is using equipment with integrated smart sensors and artificial intelligence. These technologies also enable prescriptive maintenance, which uses machine learning to help companies specifically adjust their operating conditions for desired production outcomes.”
One of the first robotic predictive maintenance applications of the IIoT occurred several years ago in the auto industry when General Motors teamed up with Cisco and FANUC America Corp. to launch a zero downtime program. Called ZDT, the predictive analytics service identifies potential failures so engineers and plant managers can schedule maintenance and repairs. This prevents unexpected breakdowns during production, thereby saving manufacturers time and money. According to Tuohy, the ZDT program has proven to be quite successful over the last several years. He says that about 30,000 robots worldwide are connected to the system.
UVeye Enters into Strategic Collaboration with General Motors to Expand Technology to Global Dealerships
UVeye, a provider of advanced vehicle diagnostic systems, today announced that it has received an investment from the capital venture arm of General Motors, GM Ventures, to help fund the development and commercialization of the company’s vehicle inspection technology.
As part of the strategic collaboration agreement, the two companies have agreed to work on a variety of vehicle-inspection technology projects involving used-car auctions, fleet operations and automotive dealership sales. In the future, UVeye plans to incorporate electric-vehicle and autonomous-driving platforms into its inspection databases as well.
GM Buying Out SoftBank's $2.1 Billion Stake in Cruise Self-Driving Cars
American automaker General Motors announced Friday it is acquiring SoftBank’s $2.1 billion stake in its autonomous car venture Cruise. In addition, GM will chip in another $1.35 billion investment to cover a commitment made in 2018 by the Vision Fund of SoftBank, a Japanese telecom giant. The Detroit firm has ramped up its investments in autonomous technology and its build-out of electric vehicle capacity as it looks to curb emissions and engage in a technology race with Tesla and other self-driving ventures.
Missing Chips Snarl Car Production at Factories Worldwide
Semiconductor shortages may persist throughout the first half as chipmakers adjust their operations, researcher IHS Market predicted on Dec. 23. Automakers will start to see component supply gradually ease in the next two to three months, China Passenger Car Association, which groups the country’s largest carmakers, said Monday.
Chipmakers favor consumer-electronics customers because their orders are larger than those of automakers – the annual smartphone market alone is more than 1 billion devices, compared with fewer than 100 million cars. Automaking is also a lower-margin business, leaving manufacturers unwilling to bid up chip prices as they avoid risking their profitability.
How Ford, GM, FCA, and Tesla are bringing back factory workers
In the last week, factory employees have returned to work across the United States to make cars for the country’s four main auto manufacturers: Ford, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and Tesla. And each of those companies has published a plan showing how it will try to keep those workers from contracting or spreading COVID-19.
Those plans largely take the same shape. They’re presented in glossy PDF pamphlets, each starting with a letter to employees from the respective company’s highest-ranking executive overseeing workplace safety. Like any corporate document, they occasionally get bogged down with platitudes. But they all largely describe a lot of the same basic precautions, including supplying employees with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) like masks or enforcing physical distancing of at least six feet.
How GM and Ford switched out pickup trucks for breathing machines
In the most severe cases of COVID-19, a patient’s lungs become so inflamed and full of fluid that they no longer deliver enough oxygen to the bloodstream to keep that person alive. One way to counteract this is by using a ventilator, which helps the patient’s lungs operate while the rest of the body fights off the virus.
As the spread of the new coronavirus bloomed into a pandemic, it became clear that there may not be enough ventilators in the United States (and around the world) to treat the coming wave of patients with these severe symptoms.