General Motors has highlighted the progress made by its GM China Advanced Design Center since its expansion and renovation, sharing its development work on Proxima – a new EV design concept tailored for the Chinese market.
At the Ben Se (Creative Essence) media event in Shanghai, the corporation showcased various EV designs developed for internal research. Here, GM demonstrated how its creative team in the region is utilizing facilities and technologies to adopt customer-centric thinking, and tech-empowered solutions, throughout the advanced design process.
Based in Shanghai, the Design Center itself offers a range of capabilities encompassing creative design, digital and clay modeling, a paint shop and CMF (color, material and finish). Beyond China, the facility is also providing insights and knowledge gained from experiential projects that will influence GM’s global design practices. The advanced design projects conducted at the Shanghai Design Center, and three additional centers located around the world, ultimately provide a platform for the corporation to forecast, demonstrate, and understand design trends. They will likewise help it synthesize market-facing insights that could inspire its product portfolio over the next five to ten years.
In developing these projects, GM’s design team use a suite of integrated visualization solutions that, themselves, sit within a 3D creation platform. The solutions utilized here include Mixed Reality in a universal seating buck, as well as a vehicle configurator, and 3D glasses-free review applications enabled by the Unreal Engine real-time 3D visualization tool.
One of the projects carried out by the studio is Proxima, a concept intended to preview the design of future GM EVs. Representing the studio’s first completed project since its shift towards EV design began, Proxima works to enhance vehicle proportions, interior spaciousness, and user comfort through an upgraded in-cabin experience. In addition to Proxima, the GM China Advanced Design Center is also working on projects that will support GM’s global brands align with key industry trends.
