General Motors has announced it will invest more than $81 million into the company’s Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, to prepare the campus to build the Cadillac Celestiq. The investment will be used to purchase and install related equipment to hand-build the Celestiq and campus renovation work has already begun.
The Celestiq will be the first production vehicle to be built at GM’s Global Technical Center, the center of the company’s engineering and design efforts since its inauguration in May 1956.
“As Cadillac’s future flagship sedan, Celestiq signifies a new, resurgent era for the brand,” said Mark Reuss, president, General Motors. “Each one will be hand-built by an amazing team of craftspeople on our historic Technical Center campus, and today’s investment announcement emphasizes our commitment to delivering a world-class Cadillac with nothing but the best in craftsmanship, design, engineering and technology.”
The Cadillac Celestiq will be built on GM’s Ultium Platform, the heart of the company’s EV strategy. The Ultium Platform encompasses a common electric vehicle architecture and propulsion components like battery cells, modules, packs, Ultium Drive units, EV motors and integrated power electronics.
Celestiq’s roof is expected to be one of the first to feature a four-quadrant, suspended-particle-device smart glass. With this smart glass, each occupant of the vehicle can set their own level of roof transparency.
The driver and front-seat passenger will also enjoy a pillar-to-pillar freeform display with active privacy to help mitigate driver distraction.
GM also says that Celestiq is driving innovation across GM’s supplier community with what’s expected to be the highest volume of 3D printed components — more than 100 — of any GM production vehicle. This will include both structural and cosmetic parts, and both polymer and metal pieces. Additionally, the Celestiq production facility itself will leverage additive manufacturing for tooling, fixtures and gauges in the assembly process.
GM’s Additive Industrialization Center, which opened on the GM Global Technical Center campus in 2020, has enabled Cadillac to establish itself at the forefront of functional and aesthetic 3D-printed components in the automotive industry. The Cadillac CT4-V and CT5-V were GM’s first vehicles to benefit from additive manufacturing with parts including the shifter emblem, transmission components and HVAC ducts.
“This investment is a great example of our commitment to GM’s EV transformation as we apply our manufacturing expertise to a one-of-a-kind, ultra-luxury vehicle for the Cadillac brand,” said Gerald Johnson, executive vice president of Global Manufacturing and Sustainability. “The advanced manufacturing technology and tools we are utilizing on Celestiq will help our team deliver the highest quality vehicles to our customers.”