General Motors is building a Battery Cell Development Center at its Warren, Michigan campus, a project intended to move new electric vehicle battery chemistries from the laboratory into high-volume manufacturing faster than the industry has managed before. The facility occupies a pair of adjacent white buildings with roughly 500,000 square feet of combined space on the automaker's 710-acre site. Once finished, it will house equipment for fabricating prototype cells, including mixers for cell slurry, coating machines that apply electrode material to film, and machinery for other steps in the process. GM's stated objective is cutting the cost of its EVs.
Battery packs account for 30 to 40 percent of the total cost of a GM electric vehicle, according to the company. GM sells more EVs in the United States than any automaker except Tesla, but most of its lineup remains too expensive to compete in the lower price ranges where buyer interest has grown. Battery engineers at the company argue the new center can launch new cell chemistries and formats for EVs and battery energy-storage systems in less time than previously expected, and the company has said its future depends on whether that succeeds.
The BCDC carries an estimated total cost of $900 million, according to its head, Mo Gallegos. At maximum output it might produce 4 to 5 gigawatt-hours of cells, though the goal is optimizing production methods rather than volume. GM battery chief Kurt Kelty has described the center as the critical bridge from research and development to production, combining virtual modeling, physical testing and small-scale production lines. The plant is designed to prove out manufacturing processes and recipes before they are used at full scale, with knowledge transferred to GM's cell production partners.
The facility is scheduled to produce its first test cells, lithium manganese-rich prismatic cells, in the fourth quarter of this year. Volume production of those LMR cells at the Ultium Cells plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee is not expected until 2028. GM has said it is also working with the startup Peak Energy on sodium-ion cells for energy storage. LMR cells use very little cobalt or nickel, minerals that China has controlled globally through a 15-year effort to build supply and processing capacity.
The BCDC is the third phase of GM's battery development pipeline, following its Kettering R&D laboratory and the Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center, which opened in 2023 next door. Wallace expands new chemistries into large-format cells up to 200 amp-hours in batches of a few dozen; the BCDC will use real production equipment to build thousands of cells a day. Of the two buildings, the first handles anode and cathode fabrication on opposite sides with electrode assembly in the middle, and a bridge carries rolls of electrode film to the second, where cells are assembled, charged and tested for eight to 11 days.
Cell production partners expected to take GM's new designs to full scale include Ultium Cells LLC, the joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solution. The venture's first plant, in Warren, Ohio, opened in 2022 and builds large-format nickel-manganese-cobalt-aluminium pouch cells for GM's EV line, excluding the 2027 Bolt. Its second plant, in Spring Hill, Tennessee, opened in early 2024 and produces lithium-ion phosphate cells for battery energy storage.
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