By Kalea Hall
DETROIT (Reuters) -General Motors and battery partner LG Energy Solution are planning to start commercial production of lower-cost cells for future electric vehicles at a U.S. facility starting in 2028, the companies said on Tuesday.
The cells will have a lithium manganese-rich (LMR) chemistry, which GM says is lower cost than the nickel-rich cells used today, but will still give customers the range they want in future electric trucks and full-size SUVs. The cells will also be prismatic versus the current pouch structure, reducing the number of parts in the battery pack by more than 50%, according to GM.
The Detroit automaker, which now has 12 electric vehicles in its lineup, is trying to lower its battery costs to enable cost parity with its gas-powered products by adding new types of cells and chemistries in those cells.
“We’re adopting flexible chemistries for the best balance of range, performance and affordability,” said Kurt Kelty, GM’s vice president of battery, propulsion and sustainability, during a media briefing on the announcement. “My mission here is to get as many EVs on the road as possible. We need to get price parity with (internal combustion engine vehicles) and then this thing’s just going to take off.”
The LMR cells will be made at one of the two LG-GM joint-venture Ultium Cells battery plants the companies have in Ohio and Tennessee. With the LMR prismatic cells, GM expects to offer more than 400 miles of range in a single charge on an electric truck, “while significantly reducing our battery costs,” Kelty said.
GM is expecting to reduce its battery pack costs by $30 per kilowatt-hour in 2025, but it hasn’t said how much its per-kilowatt-hour costs are.
GM is also planning to offer vehicles with lithium-iron phosphate-based cells that are also lower cost than the nickel cells. Kelty said GM will release more information soon.
While GM aims to be the first automaker to commercially deploy LMR batteries in its electric vehicles, crosstown rival Ford Motor is also working on deploying the technology, according to a recent blog its director of electrified propulsion engineering wrote on LinkedIn.
(Reporting by Kalea Hall; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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