GM has been doing a masterful
GM has been doing a masterful marketing job so far with the introduction of their upcoming new pickups. The latest announcements reveal some stunning news: We now know what I expected from the gas engines; they're going to introduce Delphi's dynamic skip fire technologies for fuel savings, which should be on the order of matching Ford's downsizing and turbo charging for low-load scenario and this will give customers more choice in the lower cost, more mainstream power train choice arenas. I think that Delphi had previously announced that the cost for this technology is in the hundreds as an add-on system, and considering that GM was already using active fuel management technology, this should allow them to provide at least on par FE with F150 without much add on to their cost structure. Delphi has also demonstrated this displacement management strategy in combination with mild hybrid system, so maybe that's foreshowing what's to come for the 2019 GM pickups.
GM also announced this diesel engine and a couple of transmission reveals with specific engine choices, but they also managed to leave plenty of suspense, because they announced that there will be a total of six power train choices, but only revealed three of them to us at the auto show. So now what? We know that next-generation cylinder deactivation and a very huge commitment towards a diesel product will be in the mix; but what will the other power trains be. Will the 4.3 V6 return as the base, or will it be something new or different? There have been rumors of a four cylinder turbo mild hybrid as a possibility from both Ram and GM, but Ram, at least at first, will offer mild hybrids but connected to the same and not reworked engines. So will GM offer both a downsized turbo strategy and a cylinder deactivation strategy and a diesel strategy and a mild hybrid strategy as part of these six power trains, or just one or two? It will be very interesting to see what they other three will be, but we have to assume that their will be a base engine smaller than the 5.3L V8; and it could be naturally aspired or it could be turbo; or we could have both; we could have some mild hybrid choices with a base engine or the 5.3 or the 6.2 or all three of them. Lots of suspense. GM is really going big with the new truck, and that's good to finally see someone step up to "the bar".