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 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 houses 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.”

Battery reboot

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 400-plus 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. 

Mastering the battery recipe

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. The Ultium plant makes about 300,000 cells per year, or 45 gigawatt-hours worth. The BCDC has fewer production lines, makes about a hundredth the number of cells, and its mixing tanks, where battery materials are blended, hold 40 liters instead of 2,000. Though smaller, the BCDC is still an order of magnitude larger than the Wallace Center next door. 

“The BCDC is intended to bridge the gap,” Mo Gallegos, head of BCDC at GM, told TechCrunch. 

Turning to AI models

To cut costs further, GM has been working to simulate as many processes as possible using a variety of AI models. The company has invested heavily in computing power, and while no one would put a number on it, I’m told it’s “national lab-scale.”

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

“On LMR, we’ve logged over 150 million CPU hours,” Radu Theyyunni, director of global virtual electrification and powertrain at GM, told TechCrunch. “Most engine programs do not use that many core hours.” 

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

As the BCDC has taken shape, the digital twin has been used for a range of tasks. In one instance, the team used it to determine if the plans left enough clearance around equipment for regular operations and repairs. In another, they simulated the equipments’ control systems to ensure everything would behave as intended. 

“Does the equipment run how it’s supposed to? Does it run safely? Is it doing all the things we think this control system is going to do? That shortens our debug and ramp up time,” Gallegos said. Altogether, GM says the simulations have saved it millions of dollars.

GM needs all the speed it can get. 

While the EV market in the U.S. has softened recently, globally, it grew 20% last year. The looming specter of high oil prices coupled with declining battery costs suggests the transition away from fossil fuels will happen eventually, if not sooner. 

If LMR is ready in time, it could help GM offer cost competitive EVs with enough range to placate anxious Americans. But first LMR needs to pass through the BCDC. Gallegos expects the first batches to roll off the line later this year.

In the coming decade, battery development will be as important to automakers as engine development was over the last century. GM’s EV future hinges on its ability to shepherd new chemistries from R&D through to production. 

Kelty is fond of saying that GM is developing “the right battery for the right application,” perhaps echoing an old company slogan, “a car for every purse and purpose.” 

LMR might be the BCDC’s first test, but it’s unlikely to be its last.