To produce affordable electric vehicles on a large scale, automakers need to reduce battery cost and ensure a stable supply of important raw materials.
For General Motors and battery plants joint venture Ultium Cells LLC with LG Energy Solution, that will be aided by plans announced Wednesday to form a joint venture between the automaker and Posco Chemical’s Posco Chemical. South Korea.
The new venture will create a factory in North America that will process some of the battery materials crucial to getting to that scale. According to GM, cathode active materials account for about 40% of the cost of a battery cell.
The joint venture has yet to be formed, and GM has yet to disclose the amount of the partnership or an estimate of the cost reductions provided by the joint venture. But it did say the factory would add hundreds of jobs.
Artist’s impression of Ultium Cells’ battery factory in Lordstown, Ohio
According to Doug Parks, GM executive VP overseeing product development, procurement and supply chain, the facility will open in 2024 and supply “significant amounts” of materials to all four Ultium Cells facilities. LLC was planned from GM and LG. Energy Solutions, cell manufacturing for GM vehicles. That includes factories in Lordstown, Ohio and Spring Hill, Tennessee, with two more plans by mid-decade.
Despite being the company’s first new generation Ultium electric vehicle, GMC Hummer EV, being a low-volume model with a six-figure price tag, GM once again emphasizes that EV volume is important. It notes that there are “bulk retail offerings underway,” including a Buick crossover, vans from Chevrolet and GMC, a Chevy crossover costs about $30,000, and as Parks puts it, “an upcoming one costs even less.”
2022 GMC Hummer EV pre-production at Factory Zero in Detroit, Michigan
The cathode feedstock plant will start with feedstock for NCMA chemicals, which GM has been focusing on expanding over the course of the decade. It is said that with the two additional plants, it will have a total cell production capacity of 140 GWh.
“This means by value, the majority of the Ultium platform will be sourced, processed or manufactured in North America by 2025,” Parks said. It’s part of GM’s goal of a “stable and resilient” supply chain for electric vehicles.
It’s part of GM’s effort to shape up North American vertical integration strategy for electric vehicles and supply chain, part of a plan to invest $27 billion in electric vehicles by 2025. There are already at least ten partners in this value chain, the company said.
2022 EV bolt assembly – battery combination
Among them, the facility will also work with materials recovered from a Lifecycle cooperation, in a project aimed primarily at recovering scrap from battery cell manufacturing at new factories. Parks says GM is working on issues with EV . bolt replacement pack, it first looks at ways to reuse the original packages for roles like grid management, but if not, it could also look at bringing material from those Bolt EV packages back into the chain supply.
