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Fewer Dealer Visits, Coming Soon.
Future Chevrolet Silverado owners won’t need to visit their dealers as often. Apparently, GM is developing a system to deliver more advanced over-the-air (OTA) updates to its cars, which would reduce how often an owner has to travel to a dealership to get new software loaded into their system.
While current GM-brand vehicles are capable of OTA updates, the current system is limited in its scope and hampered by multiple subsets of software for different cars. Right now, GM has electric, hybrid, and ICE vehicles, all of which are running software that’s different from one another. This new system plans to rectify that, unifying it to one set of software for all cars.
2027 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 ZR2 in White SandsChevrolet
Advanced Features and OTA
General Motors’ Senior Vice President of Vehicle Products, Jaclyn McQuaid, went on an interview with The Drive in order to talk more about the new central compute system that GM has planned. Among the features that were discussed, McQuaid said that OTA updates will be a part of the system’s capabilities.
While the verdict on the new future-thinking features is still up in the air, the confirmation of OTA updates means that vehicle owners, whose cars are capable of receiving OTA updates, won’t have to visit dealers anymore to update their vehicles’ software, saving them a trip or two to the dealership, which “could have been an email,” so to speak.
McQuaid told the drive: “The goal is to significantly reduce what would need a dealership visit versus what can be done OTA.” GM’s new central compute system will also become the bedrock for its new features, and it will also revolve around the AI reboot of OnStar, LMR-powered BEVs, and autonomous driving features for the company’s new vehicles.
McQuaid did still mention that owners will have to visit dealerships for maintenance and for worn-out or damaged hardware. No amount of compute power can fix a ruptured airbag or fix a broken windshield, so don’t expect your next oil change to come over-the-air. The goal here is to eliminate the need for in-dealer software updates for some parts of the car. The new compute system will simply allow OTA updates to reach more vehicle systems.
2027 Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD
Chevrolet
Scheduled for 2028
The new central compute system will use multiple modules and put them into one system. The new computational architecture will allow GM to go further and deeper with its OTA updates. McQuaid also mentioned that the new central compute system will have more capabilities than today’s systems because of the “dozens of different modules,” which, paired with the central compute, will “significantly expand what is capable of an OTA,” McQuaid continued.
Unlike some brands that use several ECUs to govern and control different parts of the car, we can expect GM’s central compute system to have less fragmentation. This arrangement will be key to unlocking the next big features for GM, and the brand is designing its architecture and software to have 40 times more computational power than the systems of today. This development has been in the works since 2019, and the company’s goals remain the same, which is to deliver a more powerful computer for the car and enable more powerful OTA updates.
2025-2026 Cadillac Escalade IQCadillac
About the author
Earl Lee is a news editor at Autoblog and an automotive journalist and video producer with nearly a decade of experience. He is a video project coordinator at AutoDeal.com.ph and a contributor at YugaTech, and was a weekend writer for RideApart.