Welcome to today's edition of the Daily 5.
General Motors yesterday clarified a manager's presentation to suppliers that stated the automaker "will move to 100 percent virtual design, development and validation by 2025."
The about-face happened after we published a story from our affiliate Rubber News that reported these plans. The story relied on a recent presentation made in Ohio by Matthew Wieczorek, GM engineering group manager, whose slides (see here) made that ambitious 2025 goal seemingly clear.
Turns out, it really was a virtual goal.
Within roughly six hours after the story published, GM sent a statement to Rubber News that said the automaker doesn't have plans to shift its entire development system to virtual at this point, but it "looks at a range of tools and innovations to further enhance our development capabilities, and that helps make our teams even more productive throughout the process," a GM spokesperson told Rubber News. "We work with our teams and tools to find the right balance of safety, quality and speed to do so."
The GM spokesperson explained that Wieczorek's presentation was aimed strictly at his supplier audience and was "not referring to the entire vehicle development, design, or validation process."
Since this story received a great deal of attention from the Automotive News audience, we wanted to make sure you saw this update.
We've got plenty of other news breaking today.
Reporter Urvaksh Karkaria got the scoop on Nissan's plans for a Rogue hybrid to join its U.S. lineup and arrive on dealership lots late next year.
Speaking of hybrids, this story by Georgia Hall quotes a J.D. Power study that pours some cold water on the notion that hybrids will help consumers more easily make the transition to EVs.
"There's been a lot of focus on creating intermediary steps for consumers who may not be ready to fully adopt a battery-electric vehicle yet," Brent Gruber, executive director of the EV practice at J.D. Power, told Automotive News.
He said a plug-in hybrid owner's experience "really isn't favorable in comparison to battery-electric vehicles."
From Europe, we have a story on Ferrari's latest supercar: the 1,183-hp F80 hybrid. It'll be priced at a mere $3.9 million.
Finally, in case you missed it, we published the latest installments of our two-week series on artificial intelligence. Today's first story focuses on how automakers are using AI to combat hackers trying to get into connected cars. And by the way, most cars will be fully connected by the end of the decade. A second story delves into questions about AI and self-driving cars.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day!
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
