Hidden among the architectural landmarks of General Motors’ sprawling Warren Tech Center outside Detroit is a new cornerstone of the automaker’s $900 million bet on its electric future. The nondescript 500,000-square-foot pair of off-white boxes, which house GM’s new Battery Cell Development Center, might not look like much. But locked inside is the key to GM’s plan to slash the cost of its EVs by nearly 10%.
At a time when some car companies are pulling back on EVs, GM’s new Battery Cell Development Center is part of a reboot. And it’s one that GM told TechCrunch will allow it to bring a new slate of lower-cost batteries to market a year faster than planned.
GM hasn’t been immune to the malaise in the U.S. EV market. Last year, the automaker took a $1.6 billion charge as it reconfigured its EV production capacity, laying off thousands of workers in the process. It has also reportedly shelved, if temporarily, a refresh of its full-size EV trucks and SUVs.
To get its EV strategy back on track, Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery and sustainability at GM, is pinning the company’s success on a new battery chemistry known as LMR. Kelty, who previously led battery technology at Tesla, has made it his signature product in the two years he’s been with the company.
“That is really going to be our bread and butter,” Kelty told TechCrunch. “That is going to be our main product line.” GM’s halting rollout of EVs has mirrored the wider battery industry in the U.S., which over the last couple of decades has developed in fits and starts.
Early startups haven’t lived up to their promise, and more recently, intense competition from Chinese companies has pushed automakers and battery manufacturers to rethink the plans they made five years ago. At GM, that pressure led to the shortened life of Ultium, the branded battery platform that underpins its current EVs.
Like much of the industry, the automaker had bet heavily on a pricey yet powerful battery chemistry known as NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt). Rising materials costs and China’s dominance of key critical minerals have kept EV prices higher than expected. NMC won’t disappear, but at GM, it’ll be restricted to GM’s high-end vehicles.
In its place, GM has been developing LMR (lithium-manganese-rich), which it says is almost as energy dense as NMC but at a cost that’s comparable to cheaper chemistries like LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) that power low-end models like the Chevrolet Bolt.
When GM introduced LMR last year, it said that, in a truck like the Chevrolet Silverado EV, the new chemistry should preserve most of the vehicle’s more than 400-mile range while slashing costs by at least $6,000. For a mid-range model, that would bring it within spitting distance of the gas version.
Discovering a new battery chemistry is one thing. Manufacturing gigawatt-hours’ worth of it is another, especially at the pace the EV industry is moving. Facing pressure from automotive giants like BYD and battery titans like CATL, GM says it wants to get LMR vehicles on the road by 2028.
GM needs the new Battery Cell Development Center to deliver if it wants to hit that deadline. The new building serves as the keystone of GM’s battery strategy. The company opened its Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center and its first gigafactory in 2022.
What was missing was a way to connect the breakthroughs that emerged from Wallace to the factory floors in Tennessee and Ohio. The BCDC, as insiders call the facility, is something like a pilot line, but bigger. When fully operational, it will be capable of producing about 2,500 cells per day, or about half a gigawatt-hour per year.
It will take batteries developed in small batches — about 30 to 50 per day — at the Wallace Battery Cell Research Center next door and determine if they’re ready for production. Many recipes for new batteries fail to deliver when they’re spun up to commercial scale, and companies don’t have years to work out the kinks.
If a new chemistry can’t hit 85% yield within 18 months on a production line, it shouldn’t be considered commercially viable, according to a McKinsey report. The challenges are similar to using a recipe intended for a family of four and scaling it up to a wedding reception with 400 guests.
It’s not just the sheer throughput of the factory, either. Batteries that emerge from the research center are small coin cells, but the cells in an EV pack look more like a small cutting board.
“Once you learn how to make the recipe in Wallace, then you’ve got to figure out, well, how do you make this in high volume?” Kelty said. “You really learn a lot going from that coin cell to the large format because it doesn’t transfer perfectly.” The BCDC is intended to make that step less painful.
A test run at the facility costs about $200,000, which is far less than at the full-size Ultium plant. When the BCDC team is confident it has the process nailed down, the transition to full production should be easier, Kelty said.
“The equipment is almost the same between them, and so it shouldn’t be as hard of a handoff.” The BCDC is one or two orders of magnitude smaller than the 2.8 million-square-foot Ultium battery factory in Tennessee.
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