GM Taps AI to Halve Vehicle Development Time, Targeting Two-Year Cycles

General Motors aims to cut its vehicle development cycle from four to five years to roughly two years, using artificial intelligence and virtual engineering to compete with faster Chinese automakers, chief product officer Sterling Anderson said. GM engineers virtually evaluated more than 300,000 designs for its new lithium manganese-rich (LMR) batteries before building a physical prototype, moving from first battery-pack concept to formal approval in one month, Anderson told Axios. The company is also building digital models of vehicles and factories from decades of accumulated component, material and manufacturing data to test changes before real-world implementation. Anderson acknowledged Chinese automakers benefit from a deeply integrated supplier ecosystem that enables rapid sourcing of common components, an advantage Western rivals lack. He said GM's scale, historically a source of inertia, has generated data that can now accelerate development. "The faster you move, the more you iterate," he said. "The more you iterate, the better the product gets."