GM wants to lower battery costs even more by building them with less expensive and more widely available materials. Ultium batteries are made of a traditional nickel-cobalt-manganese combination, but GM also added aluminum. That allowed it to reduce the amount of costly cobalt by 70 percent.
“We are scouring the entire value chain and the globe looking at mines, refiners, precursor manufacturers to directly secure supply, to understand where partnerships and investments can yield dividends and to look for areas of untapped value,” Oury said.
The automaker wants to source as much raw material as possible from North America, and it’s experimenting with additives to extend battery life.
“We have vehicles in our Maven fleet that are already trending to more than half a million miles” of lifetime range, Oury said. “A million-mile battery life for shared mobility usage models is within striking distance.”
The GMC Hummer electric pickup, slated for production in fall 2021, will be the first vehicle with new battery technology, GM said. The automaker also gave previews of other EVs to follow: a Hummer SUV, a midsize Chevy SUV, a Buick SUV and crossover and three Cadillacs — including a six-figure, hand-built sedan called the Celestiq.
GM has said it plans to have 20 EVs globally by 2023, and it’s converting the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant into an EV manufacturing hub with a $3 billion investment.
