GM’s electric future depends on a new battery, and this building

Hidden among the architectural landmarks of General Motors’ sprawling Warren Tech Center outside Detroit is the new centerpiece of the automaker’s $900 million bet on its electric future.

The nondescript 500,000-square-foot pair of off-white boxes that house GM’s new battery cell development center may not seem like much. But staying inside is key to GM’s plan to cut the cost of its electric vehicles by about 10%.

At a time when some auto companies are pulling back from electric vehicles, GM’s new battery cell development center is part of the reboot. It’s one of the batteries that GM told TechCrunch will allow it to bring a new slate of low-cost batteries to market a year faster than planned.

GM has not been immune to the tightness in the US electric vehicle market. Last year, the automaker took a $1.6 billion charge while reconfiguring its electric vehicle production capacity, laying off thousands of workers in the process. It has also reportedly suspended the upgrade of its electric trucks and full-size SUVs, albeit temporarily.

To get its electric vehicle strategy back on track, Kurt Kelty, GM’s vice president of battery and sustainability, attributes the company’s success to a new battery chemistry known as LMR. Kelty, who previously led battery technology at Tesla, made it his signature product during his two years with the company.

“This is really going to be our bread and butter,” Kelty told TechCrunch. “This will be our main product line.”

Restart the battery

GM’s pause on electric vehicles reflects the broader battery industry in the United States, which has developed in fits and starts over the past two decades. Early startups have not delivered on their promise, and more recently, intense competition from Chinese companies has prompted automakers and battery makers to rethink plans they made five years ago.

At General Motors, this pressure has shortened the life of Ultium, the brand’s battery platform that underpins its current electric vehicles. Like much of the industry, the automaker has bet big on an expensive but powerful battery chemistry known as NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt). Rising material costs and China’s dominance of critical metals have kept electric vehicle prices higher than expected. NMC is not going away, but at GM, it will be limited to high-end GM vehicles.

Instead, GM has developed LMR (lithium-manganese-rich), which it says is nearly as energy-dense as NMC but at a cost similar to cheaper chemistries like LFP (lithium-iron phosphate) that power low-end models like the Chevrolet Bolt.

When GM introduced the LMR last year, it said that in a truck like the Chevrolet Silverado EV, the new chemistry should preserve most of the vehicle’s 400-plus mile range while cutting costs by at least $6,000. For a mid-range model, that would put it within striking distance of the gas version.

It’s one thing to discover new battery chemistry. Manufacturing a gigawatt-hour’s worth is another matter, especially with the pace at which the electric vehicle industry is moving. Facing pressure from auto giants like BYD and battery giants like CATL, GM says it wants to get LMR vehicles on the road by 2028. GM needs a new battery cell development center to deliver if it wants to reach that deadline.

The new building serves as the cornerstone of GM’s battery strategy. The company opened the Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center and its first large factory in 2022. What was missing was a way to connect the breakthroughs emerging from Wallace to factory floors in Tennessee and Ohio.

The BCDC, as those familiar with the facility call it, is similar to the pilot line, but larger. When fully operational, it will be able to produce about 2,500 cells per day, or about half a gigawatt-hour per year. It will take developing the batteries in small batches — about 30 to 50 per day — at the nearby Wallace Battery Cell Research Center and determining whether they are ready for production.

Master the battery recipe

Many recipes for new batteries fail to pan out when produced on a commercial scale, and companies don’t have years to work out the kinks. If a new chemistry cannot achieve an 85% yield within 18 months on the production line, it should not be considered commercially viable, according to the McKinsey report.

The challenges are like taking a recipe intended for a family of four and scaling it up to a wedding of 400 guests. It’s not just the plant’s enormous productivity, either. The batteries coming out of the research center are small coin cells, but the cells in the EV package look more like a small cutting board.

“Once you learn how to make the recipe at Wallace, you have to figure out, ‘Okay, how do you make this recipe in large quantities?’ Quilty said. “You really learn a lot going from that metal cell to the big format because it doesn’t transfer perfectly.”

BCDC aims to make this step less painful.

The cost of testing at the facility is about $200,000, which is much less than the cost of a full-sized Ultium factory. When the BCDC team is confident the process will work, the transition to full production should be easier, Kelty said. “The equipment is almost the same between them, so delivering it shouldn’t be that difficult.”

BCDC is one or two orders of magnitude smaller than Ultium’s 2.8 million-square-foot battery factory in Tennessee. The Ultium factory produces about 300,000 cells per year, or 45 gigawatt-hours. BCDC has fewer production lines, makes about a hundredth as many cells, and its mixing tanks, where battery materials are mixed, hold 40 liters instead of 2,000 litres. Although BCDC is smaller, it is still larger in size than the neighboring Wallace Center.

“BCDC aims to fill the gap,” Mo Gallegos, head of BCDC at GM, told TechCrunch.

Turn to artificial intelligence models

To further reduce costs, GM is working to simulate as many operations as possible using a variety of artificial intelligence models. The company has invested heavily in computing power, and while no one has put a number on it, I’m told it’s “on national lab scale.”

The automaker has developed physics-based models to simulate how changes in chemistry or production process affect battery cell performance.

“At LMR, we have logged more than 150 million CPU hours,” Radu Theyyunni, director of global virtual electrification and powertrain at GM, told TechCrunch. “Most engine software doesn’t use that many core clocks.”

There’s also a digital twin of the entire BCDC, including equipment control panels, wiring, and even the blades in the mixing tanks. Before I set foot in BCDC, the team had me put on a virtual reality headset and walked me through the digital twin, where I was able to follow the production line from start to finish.

With the formation of BCDC, the digital twin has been used for a range of tasks. In one case, the team used it to determine whether plans left enough space around equipment needed for regular operations and repairs. In another experiment, they simulated equipment control systems to make sure everything would work as intended.

“Is the equipment working the way it’s supposed to? Is it operating safely? Is it doing all the things we think this control system will do? This reduces debugging time and increases time,” Gallegos said. Overall, GM says the simulations have saved it millions of dollars.

GM needs all the speed it can get.

While the US electric vehicle market has declined recently, globally it grew by 20% last year. The looming specter of higher oil prices, coupled with falling battery costs, suggests that the shift away from fossil fuels will happen eventually, if not sooner.

If the LMR is ready in time, it could help GM offer cost-competitive electric vehicles with enough range to calm anxious Americans. But first the LMR needs to pass through the BCDC. Gallegos expects the first batches of the line to be rolled out later this year.

In the next decade, battery development will be as important to automakers as engine development was over the last century. The future of GM’s electric vehicles depends on its ability to shepherd new chemistries from R&D through production.

Kelty is fond of saying that GM is developing “the right battery for the right application,” perhaps echoing the company’s old slogan: “A car for all intents and purposes.”

LMR may be the first test for BCDC, but it is unlikely to be the last.