{"id":147863,"date":"2020-05-19T15:46:20","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T19:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=147863"},"modified":"2020-05-19T15:51:35","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T19:51:35","slug":"gm-charging-toward-million-mile-ev-battery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2020\/05\/gm-charging-toward-million-mile-ev-battery\/","title":{"rendered":"GM Charging Toward Million-Mile EV Battery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
GM EVP Doug Parks said the company was getting close to developing a million-mile EV battery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The race to be the first to produce a \u201cmillion-mile\u201d electric vehicle battery seemingly has come down to two players: General Motors Co. and Tesla Inc. A top GM executive noted the company is \u201calmost there\u201d during an online conference Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Doug Parks, GM\u2019s executive vice president, Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain, revealed the status of the company\u2019s efforts for the benchmark battery while talking to investors and analysts at Citi\u2019s \u201c2020 Car of the Future\u201d conference. He didn\u2019t offer an estimate as to when the battery would be completed, but he did say the company has multiple teams working on the project.<\/p>\n

EV maker Tesla has been making noise about its own million-mile battery, developed in partnership with Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., or CATL, that uses less cobalt, which helps lower the costs.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(GM reveals\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/em>flexible EV platform, new Ultium batteries.)<\/u><\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
General Motors’ new Ultium batteries offer the company a lot of flexibility in layout and design.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been teasing a \u201cBattery Day\u201d where investors, analysts and others would travel to the company\u2019s headquarters or Gigafactory to talk about all things battery, including the seven-digit mileage wonder. Some even thought he might use the event to unveil one, but the event has been postponed indefinitely due to the current pandemic.<\/p>\n

Conversely, GM recently made news about its new efforts to produce batteries with improved range and longer life. It\u2019s calling those batteries Ultium. It unveiled those in a far-ranging event talking about batteries as well as its overall electrification plans.<\/p>\n

In addition to suggesting a million-miler was close, it was also revealed in a separate investor conference that GM\u2019s joint venture with LG Chem near Lordstown, Ohio, will be called Ultium Cells LLC. GM and LG Chem are ways to reduce costs, according to Adam Kwiatkowski, executive chief engineer of GM\u2019s electric propulsion systems, who spoke at Evercore\u2019s EV Mobility Virtual Conference, including investing in the mines that produce the raw materials for batteries and hedging on metal prices.<\/p>\n

(GM\u2019s next-gen EVs will be able to charge as fast as you can fill your gas tank.)<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

GM\u2019s new battery efforts have the company re-examining everything about batteries. In fact, the new Ultium batteries will be pouch shaped, rather than the more traditional, cylindrical form adopted by manufacturers such as Tesla, the company noted during the event introducing them in March.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
GM President Mark Reuss said the company’s new batteries will push the costs down below $100 a kWh.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This configuration results in more flexibility in the way they can be laid out, being stacked either horizontal or vertically. The result can impact the shape of a battery pack, as well as the amount of power it can provide.<\/p>\n

GM claims it will be able to produce packs of anywhere from 50 to 200 kilowatt-hours \u2014 the latter being nearly twice as large as any battery pack currently on the market. In turn, the automaker announced that this \u201ccould enable a GM-estimated range up to 400\u00a0miles or more on a full charge with 0 to 60 mph acceleration as low as 3 seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

(General Motors to help develop next-gen Honda EVs.)<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The new batteries are also designed to reduce cost. The company\u2019s current powerpacks were around $145 per kWh for the Chevrolet Bolt EV when it launched a few years ago, GM President Mark Reuss said during the presentation. GM now says it expects to produce the Ultium batteries for \u201cbelow $100 per kWh.\u201d The automaker intends to sell 1 million electric vehicles a year in 2025 in the United States and China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The race to be the first to produce a \u201cmillion-mile\u201d electric vehicle battery seemingly has come down to two players: General Motors Co. and Tesla Inc. A top GM executive noted the company is \u201calmost there\u201d during an online conference Tuesday, reports TheDetroitBureau.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4389,"featured_media":129941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,5,12,9],"tags":[],"make":[58],"post-state":[],"category_old":[118,150,151,123,133,131,319,155,299,243,132,125,124,148,128,291,288],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147863"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=147863"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=147863"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=147863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}