General Motors revealed on Tuesday a new battery chemistry called Lithium-Maganese (LMR), which says it should reduce costs while producing the driving range that is simply shy from the most advanced batteries on the market.
“With the LMR, we can deliver more than 400 miles of wide to our trucks, significantly reducing the cost of our battery,” said Kurt Kelty, Vice President of GM’s battery, propulsion and viability.
LMR will dramatically reduce the amount of nickel and cobalt compared to the most advanced GM cells, two critical minerals that are not readily available from domestic sources in the United States.
Today, Chevrolet Silverado EV uses nickel-manganese-Cobalt (NMC) cells to drive 492 miles in full charge. This striking range comes with an intense price. Electric trucks start over $ 73,000 for the general public (a fleet version costs less). GM designs an edition with cheaper lithium-lithium-phosphate (LFP) cells that will reduce the price with $ 6,000but also cuts are 350 miles.
The new technology would keep LFP prices cuts without sacrificing such a wide range.
GM says the new cells will be cheaper for some reasons. For one, manganese is cheaper than cobalt or nickel. LMR chemistry will have 0-2% cobalt, 30-40% nickel and 60-70% manganese. This is significantly smaller than today’s top NMC cells, which are up to 10% cobalt and 80% nickel.
Previous attempts at manganese -rich batteries tend to degrade quickly. GM believes that the problem has broken. The automaker experimented with a series of production materials and production processes to reach the current wording.
LMR batteries will contain prismatic cells instead of pockets. Today’s ULTIUM batteries use the latter. Kelty said that the transition to prismatic cells, which have a rigid shell, would help the company build a battery with more than 50% less parts.
“It’s a huge, huge cost savings we will get,” he said.
GM has large designs for LMR, with chemistry spreading throughout EV. Andy Oury, GM’s business manager, said LMR could “get a huge part in the middle” of the market, pushing LFP into input vehicles and expensive NMC into applications that need high range and high energy density.
The new cells will be manufactured by ULTIUM cells, the GM consortium with LG Energy Solution. Through ULTIUM, the two companies have invested billions of dollars in the construction of batteries in the United States.
Both have been seeking LMR for years. GM has more than 50 patents on LMR, although LG also works on technology itself. Kelty acknowledged that it is likely that LG could make its own version of LMR cells that do not violate GM’s patents, making chemistry widely available. “It will be interesting to see how all this is playing out,” Kelty said.
GM’s LMR survey is ongoing for a decade. His efforts have hit high tools for the last two years, as engineers have successfully produced high -form cells similar to those of the UN on the road today.
GM has made about 300 high -form cells so far, and its test regime is equivalent to about 1.5 million miles of standard driving, said Kushal Narayanaswamy, director of advanced cell engineering in the automotive industry.
This leaves only a few years for the company to modify its existing production plants to accommodate the new chemistry and then increase production. Escalation, in particular, burst The first cells ULTIUM.
Kelty is sure that GM can hit the 2028 target.
“He knows all the performance measurements. We have a partner who is going to build it and have a production site,” he said. “The other thing is that the supply chain is much more local than the high-nickel or LFP, so we are really motivated to do so. There are many things that meet here that really make us want to go quickly.”
