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Title: Will GM's Bet on Battery Tech Jumpstart the Transition to Electric
Cars?

Link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/05/25/...

Whether General Motors survives "depends in part on whether its bets on
battery technology pay off," writes the Wall Street Journal. At $33,600 the
company's Chevy Equinox is one of the cheapest EVs in America (only $5,000
more than the gas-powered model). "But it also recently announced a novel
type of battery that promises to be significantly cheaper, while still
providing long range, due to be rolled out in 2028..." Like many of its
competitors, GM has made huge investments in EV battery factories, and in
production lines for the vehicles themselves, and it faces challenges in
generating a return on investment in the short term... In the long run,
however, GM's focus on creating a North American supply chain for batteries
could prove savvy, says David Whiston, U.S. auto equities analyst at
Morningstar. The company is investing $625 million to mine lithium in Nevada.
It is working on sourcing every material and every part in its batteries
domestically, down to the copper and aluminum foils that go into its cells,
says [battery and sustainability lead Kurt] Kelty... GM recently unveiled a
new type of battery the company has been working on for a decade called
lithium manganese-rich batteries, or LMR. These batteries combine the low
cost of LFP batteries with the longer range of conventional, expensive
lithium-ion batteries. What makes LMR batteries more affordable is that they
use far less nickel, cobalt and other minerals that have become increasingly
expensive. Instead, they use more manganese, a common element... The
company's next initiative, says Kelty, is to further drive down the cost of
its batteries by putting more of another common element, silicon, into them.
"If GM can continue to grow demand for its EVs, in a few years the rollout of
its latest tech could give it a price and performance advantage..." the
article points out. While the EV transition is happening more slowly than
projected in the U.S., GM hiring Kelty is a bet that the country's current EV
struggles are temporary, and that technologists like Kelty will help GM get
past them. "When we reach cost parity with [internal combustion engine]
vehicles, I think that's one big milestone," says Kelty. "When you get there,
then you're really going to see the transition happen very quickly - and
we're not that far away from it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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