00:00Well, so you are, we think, the only chief engineer to have engineered a car of the year winner as well as an SUV of the year winner.
00:13Wow.
00:14Which is quite a feat.
00:17It's quite an honor.
00:30I'm the chief engineer of the Escalade IQ and IQL, and I also still am the chief engineer of the Hummer EV.
00:39This is such a neat thing.
00:43And you get really spoiled when you get in and put your foot on the brake and the door closes.
00:48Yeah.
00:49Because I'll jump into a Hummer and I'm sitting there with my foot on the brake and I'm like, oh, wait, this is that old-fashioned, I've got to close it myself.
00:54Wait, I have to close my car.
00:55Yeah, come on.
00:56I need a door closer.
01:00It was very crazy when I was, it was explained I was going to be leaving the Camaro and go over to help EVs.
01:08Was that a shock?
01:09Big shock.
01:10Big shock.
01:12I actually had a conversation with Mark Royce about it, and it was time to put the priority on making EVs exciting.
01:19No offense to bolts and volts, but if we were going to grow our EV strategy and the strategy that Mary had laid out about our role in zero, zero, zero, we needed to really put our focus on EVs.
01:34And Mark is the person who saved the Hummer name, and he had it in his mind that he wanted to do a battery electric Hummer.
01:42So, you know, I could have moped and said maybe I should retire, I'm a Camaro guy, I've got a garage full at home and so on, but you don't really get that many chances, generally, in life to start over again.
01:58And so that's how we kind of got motivated that, hey, I get this opportunity to be part of the ground zero of GM moving to an EV world.
02:09And the team for Hummer was handpicked.
02:12And actually, beyond that, the team for the battery electric trucks was handpicked because of their ability to understand how we develop vehicles, but develop them fast and not afraid to try new things.
02:27We had the bet mentality that things like two pizza lunch, two pizza meetings, if you couldn't feed people in the room with two pizzas, you had too many people there.
02:43Fail fast and fix it fast.
02:4524-hour rule.
02:47You could discuss something and go out and learn about it, but you had to come back in 24 hours and make a decision.
02:52Quick decision making.
02:53Autonomy, push the decision making down to the lower levels of the team and don't have everything go up to be pre-review, pre-review, then all of a sudden you get to an executive level and make a decision.
03:05In order to go fast, we did the entire battery electric truck architecture that way.
03:11We tried to act as a startup company.
03:14We came over and sat our engineers with our design team.
03:17Little things like that that take time out of your day to move fast.
03:25You know, the team lived over here at the design studio, understood what the mission was.
03:31The IQ was meant for style conscious, the ones that want to be first.
03:38When a new technology comes out, they want to be first to try it.
03:41So, I don't know, EV is not new, but it's new in the Cadillac world in a luxury SUV.
03:46And the styling of the IQ has a more sweeping roof line.
03:50The mission that we had from a styling standpoint was to not make it seem like a big SUV, that it was a luxury SUV, you know, styled for those that are trendsetters.
04:00And I think we accomplished that.
04:03The sweeping roof line, we, if you can, just to give an analogy, the same battery is a 24-mile battery that's in the Hummer.
04:12Right.
04:13And that's 355, roughly, miles range.
04:17Yeah.
04:17This is 460.
04:19And how do you do that?
04:21Well, it's a narrower track than the Hummer.
04:23So, this, we call this the narrow track version of the electric trucks.
04:27So, that helps the overall aero with the lower CDA.
04:31But we exceeded our drag and our CD targets for this way beyond what they were as a 0.34.
04:42Yeah.
04:42And we're at a 0.32.
04:45And that, you know, just helps enable the range.
04:47So, again, the sweeping roof line really helps enable the aerodynamics of the vehicle.
04:52We have the underbody strakes and so on that also help really put a focus on maximizing the mileage out of that 24-mile battery versus what Hummer did.
05:01And that's not really a, that's not really a butt hauler.
05:04You know, the Hummer has a different purpose.
05:05This is going to be the family vehicle.
05:07So, to get that 460, we're really focused on aero.
05:10Yeah, yeah.
05:13We are now a luxury SUV that, if you're in Detroit, you can take your family to Chicago.
05:18You don't have to stop and charge.
05:19Yeah.
05:20Or you can go to Florida on three charges.
05:22I mean, it's something that now there is no excuse why you would not want to consider an electric SUV and a luxury SUV like Escalade.
05:29And I mentioned Escalade's been around for over 25 years and we've sold over a million of them.
05:36So, it is a world-recognized luxury SUV.
05:40And I think the IQ and IQL is a perfect addition to the family.
05:44When we set out to do things like an Escalade IQ, we sit in a room with the whole team and say,
05:57what, what do you want to read about when you look backwards after we're in production and it always comes up.
06:05What a trend of the year, because we've all seen the calipers our whole lives, anybody in the auto industry and to be able to be part of a team or even acknowledge as a influencer in the industry or whatever the,
06:19it may be, um, to be part of that and actually put your hands on some hardware, I mean, it's kind of like Stanley Cup for the auto industry.
06:27And, uh, you know, I would say there are a few hundred people that have a picture of themselves with the calipers.
06:34It was pretty special.
06:35Very humbled and excited that we can now say that we're the Motor Trend SUV of the Year.
06:45This one's different because, um, uh, the, the passion behind the team, um, is not different.
06:52But, um, the Cadillac, myself learning Cadillac, I had a little exposure to the CT4, uh, when I had Camaro.
07:01Um, so I, I sort of understood Cadillac is different and Cadillac has a, has a whole different structure of meetings, of approvals, of consistency.
07:11There are people that their role is to make sure that no matter what Cadillac you get into, the customer feels the same, whether it's a, a CT4 or a Blackwing or an Escalade ICE or an Escalade EV.
07:23And, I mean, the, the attention to detail to respect the Cadillac brand, uh, and the legacy that it has, you really feel that, um, there is a priority at General Motors to, um, earn the Escalade crest and to take that back to maybe where it originally started was, it used to be named as the standard of the world.
07:46And, and, and you can feel it, you can see it.
07:51There's definitely a, a, a family environment of Cadillac that, um, no matter which team you talk to, they all have the same mission as you want to earn that crest on the front.
08:01And so that's different. And I think the passion that goes into making sure, you know, we don't go do anything necessarily specific for the EV Escalade, um, that you don't go and talk to your other counterparts to say, Hey, is this going to progress the brand?
08:15So it's very, it's, it's different for me. It was a good learning experience and I, I really enjoy it.
08:20I don't know. I, I, I, I, we talked earlier. I don't really consider this a job. I think I have the luckiest job in the world being a chief engineer.
08:39It's an aspiration of any engineer that comes to GM anyway, in my experience. Um, the fact that I was able to achieve it for so many years,
08:48I've been a chief engineer for 26 years. Um, I have, um, bosses above me that haven't even been a GM that long.
08:56So I've been very lucky and I think I stay because I love it. I love the challenges.
09:01I've been given some great opportunities, um, in my career as a chief and before that.
09:07Um, and you know, I, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do anything different if I started all over again.
09:13And then how long do I go? It's still fun.
09:17If, if it's not fun to get up and come in, you know, I'm, I'm 63.
09:22Um, but I still get up at four in the morning and do my stretches.
09:27I come in excited thinking about what can we do different today and how can we progress the company today?
09:33And as long as I'm able to do that, um, and they're interested in me doing that,
09:37and my badge works, I'll come in, I'll come in every day.
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