GM Will Build EV Battery Cell Innovation Centre in Michigan
General Motors has announced it is building a new EV battery cell innovation centre in Michigan, which will allow the automotive giant to reduce costs associated with the technologies surrounding electric vehicles and help it deliver on its electrification commitments over the next decade. This comes just days after Ford announced a new multi-billion-dollar investment of its own into a new production facility devoted to production of the Ford F-150 Lightning and other EVs as well as components for them.
The Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center, as it’s to be called, is named in honour of Bill Wallace, the late director of battery systems and electrification for GM. Under his watch, the company produced the Volt (first and second generations), the Malibu hybrid model and the Bolt EV. Wallace died from cancer in 2018.
The advantages of creating such a centre are evident for GM. The company will be able to produce more of the components needed for its future EVs in-house instead of depending on overseas suppliers (hello, global microchip shortage). It will also make it much easier and less costly to develop new technologies, notably those related to the future generation of EV battery systems based on lithium-metal and silicon, for example.
Lastly, there will be a focus on optimizing manufacturing methods at battery plants, easier to do with a brand-new facility, and then exporting them to other plants producing batteries.
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