GM announced today that it has broken ground on its Charlotte Technical Center, a 130,000 sq-ft facility intended to expand its performance and racing capabilities.
The new center is designed to support GM’s racing efforts across all the series it competes in, from sports car racing at Le Mans to stock car racing in NASCAR to open-wheel racing in IndyCar. Along with supporting motorsports activities, GM intends the center to facilitate knowledge transfer between racing teams and production vehicle development.
Representatives of Chip Ganassi Racing, Richard Childress Racing, and Hendrick Motorsports joined the company for the groundbreaking ceremony whose location was selected for its proximity to racing partners and technical suppliers.
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“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,” said 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.”
GM says that the center will utilize virtual tools, including three driver-in-the-loop simulators, aero development, and software-enabled vehicle modeling technology to allow for faster analysis and iteration. As those technologies mature, the center will require new talent, which is also being trained nearby.
Along with being near suppliers and racing teams, GM also points out that the Charlotte Technical Center is located near universities that will provide talent for the company to recruit for its software engineering, computational science, electrical engineering, and other technical positions.
Although construction on the Charlotte Technical Center was delayed by the pandemic, that only gave the GM an opportunity to make it better, the automaker claims.
“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,” said Jim Campbell, GM U.S. vice president of 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.”
GM says that it has invested $45 million in the technical center, which it plans to open in early 2022.
