GM and SAIC will co-develop new small-displacement engine, transmission

General Motors and SAIC Motor Corp, the largest listed vehicle company in the Chinese A-share stock market, announced today that they are expanding their partnership to develop a new small-displacement gasoline engine family and an advanced transmission.

“The co-development of these new engines and transmissions builds on a strong history of innovation and collaboration between GM and SAIC Motor,” said GM Vice Chairman of Global Product Operations Tom Stephens. “Together, we will continue to quickly provide our customers leading-edge technologies that improve vehicle fuel efficiency and deliver robust performance.”

GM said that the new engines will be offered in displacements from 1.0 liters to 1.5 liters. They will be compact, lightweight and will combine direct injection and turbocharging to improve performance and fuel-efficiency. Both companies will use the engines in China and future vehicles in other regions.

Development and engineering work on the new engine will be carried out by both companies in Detroit and at the Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center (PATAC), the automakers” engineering and design joint venture in Shanghai.

As for the new front-wheel-drive transmission, GM said that it will provide an upward gain of 10 percent in fuel-economy alone over today”s conventional six-speed automatic transmissions. The co-developed automatic transmission will feature dry, dual-clutch technology.

“When combined, these technologies can provide up to 20 percent improvement in CO2 emissions, compared to engines and automatic transmissions in production in China today,” GM and SAIC said in a statement.

– By: Omar Rana