How Long From New Car Idea to Wheels on the Road

Factual Questions
1

In another thread related to the current gasoline pricing it was pointed out that Detroit can’t exactly just design, retool, build, and market a new product over night. Designing and manufacturing cars takes some time.

My question is: How long (in general terms)?

Let’s assume for the question that there isn’t a general animus toward the idea at headquarters (I think corporate policy kept the GTO from getting to market for a bit, for instance). How long does it usually take from “Hey, I’ve got a great idea!” to “Here are the keys - thanks for your business?”

2

I was the one who made that claim, and actually just read a column in Car+Driver about it. I will try to dig up a cite. But I think it was something on the order of 5-7 years.

3

It really, really depends. The “Hey, I’ve got a great idea!” is really misleading. The “idea” is really the product of marketing, designers, engineers, study groups, and so in. The “great idea” can be a product of six months or sixty years, in that so much is progressive rather than revolutionary. That is, the basics never change, but you add and change things gradually through the years. Let’s leave this as a big grey area, then. Let’s say that marketing has decided on a need for a particular segment, and it’ll be fulfilled by the Clydesdale. We’ve identified key markets, types of engines, basic body shell, basic options and appointments, and probably have at least one clay model. We’re ready to begin asking ourselves the question, “can we manufacture it?” Up to this point, remember, there’s no general rule of how long it’s taken to get here. Our “official” strategy is to start all of this 40 months prior to the first publicly salable unit.

Now things get easier to determine, and all companies have to go through the same processes, and some are more efficient than others. Put the design into systems engineers can understand. Product design will worry about material sourcing and costs. Manufacturing engineering will determine how feasible a product is to build, and how much it will cost to build. Marketing will decide how many it can sell. The results of all of this will be decided, and if it’s acceptable, a program approval is given. Now, one to six months will have taken place.

At this point, the final product details can be ironed out, and tool building companies can build tools or plan kits for existing tools. Another three to six months will have taken place. If you’ve already got a tooling budget, you can place orders for long lead time items during this process (robots, conveyors, and other systems). Otherwise…

Waiting for long lead time items can chew into your schedule. Granted, other productive activities can take place during this time, but in reality, the time between tooling design and the beginning of integration will be two to three months.

Integration (building the tooling at tooling companies’ facilities) can take one to three months. Unless it’s a bunch of kits, you’re essentially building the entire factory ahead of time at the integrator. Once the tooling is validated and working, it’s torn down, packaged, and shipped to the manufactory.

Assuming there’s some place to build the new tools or sufficient downtime to upgrade kits, you can go from a complete greenfield site to producing a salable vehicle within two months, although it’s generally longer, say, six months.

In the end, once you’ve established a complete package concept, you could conceivably do it in 9 months or so, but only if you’re very lucky, have excellent suppliers, and do everything perfectly the first time. Our official “world class” strategy is 18 months from program approval until the first publicly salable unit.

4

Dang, they do not appear to have their current-issue columns online. It was titled “Our Secretary of Transportation reveals her ignorance of the auto industry”, and it was Csaba Csere’s monthly column. There was discussion of the Pontiac Solstice, how the development time was so quick, and it sill took something on the order of 4 years between the time Lutz joined GM and the car’s release into the market…

5

It seems like GM has been talking about the Camaro since I graduated college, and here I am and it’s still not here. This for a car where basically everything under the skin (platform, engine, etc) is already on the market in some form or other.

On the other hand, it seems like I just read about the BMW X6 concept, with a brand new twin turbo V8 engine and AWD system, about 2 month ago, and now, BAM, assholes in X6s are running me off the road. :slight_smile:

6

Some concept cars are shown to the public right before the model is officially launched. Just because you didn’t hear about it doesn’t mean it wasn’t in development for years.

7

BMW in particular works pretty hard to keep new models secret until just prior to availability…They don’t want to kill sales of the current version.

8

There’s a good article in this month’s Atlantic about GM’s effort to get the Chevy Volt into production. IIRC the average to-market timeline is about six years, and I think they’re trying to get the Volt in showrooms in something like four.

9

Is “Cylinder Deactivation” considered an automotive idea in the spirit of the OP?

GM came out with the V-8-6-4 engine in 1981. Used on Cadillac products, the engine changed cylinder modes, eliminating two cylinders at a time as power demands decreased. The idea was sound, but the technology was not up to it at the time. My Dad had a Cadillac with this system, and he hated it so much, he had the techs at the dealership turn it off so the car was a straight 8 cylinder and didn’t deactivate cylinders at any time.

Recently many automakers have revisited the idea. Mercedes developed a system that was optional on European-spec V-8s in 1998, debuting on the 1999 S-Class.

GM, along with Eaton (the original developer of the V-8-6-4 engine) and Delphi, have developed Displacement on Demand (DoD) for the Vortec 5300 V-8 that is an option on the 2005 Chevrolet TrailBlazer EXT, GMC Envoy XL and Envoy XUV. DoD switches from 8-cylinder to 4-cylinder mode enabling fuel economy gains of about 6 to 8 percent.

A new Vortec 3900 3.9L V-6, that will be optional on the new Pontiac G6 will also use a version of GM DoD.

Chrysler designed the new 5.7L Hemi with a similar Multiple Displacement System. The engine, an option on the Chrysler 300C, Dodge Magnum and Jeep Grand Cherokee, promises up to a 10 percent increase in fuel economy.

Honda’s Variable Cylinder Management (VCM) system, introduced in 2003 on the J30A 3.0L V-6 in the Japanese Inspire made its North American debut on the 2005 Honda Odyssey minivan and Accord hybrid in the fall of 2004.

So in this case, say maybe 20 years?