"GM To Build Advanced Battery Facilities In U.S., Picks LG Chem For Volt Cells " Green Car Advisor

GM To Build Advanced Battery Facilities In U.S., Picks LG Chem For Volt Cells

General Motors Corp., signaling that it has learned its lesson, said it plans to build its own advanced battery-pack manufacturing lab, establish a battery research facility, partner with the University of Michigan to develop an advanced battery engineering curriculum at the school and add hundreds of battery technology specialists to its own R&D staff.

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GM engineers work on early Volt battery pack.
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The automaker also announced the expected - that it has selected South Korea's LG Chem to supply the lithium-ion battery cells that will be used for the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid.

The announcements were made by GM chairman Rick Wagoner, who said that GM, which launched the modern auto industry's first electric vehicle, the EV1, in 1996 and then killed it in 2003 after declaring that people weren't interested in electric cars, is now firmly committed to electrification.

The company has spent more than $1 billion developing the Volt and will continue investing huge sums in battery technology for future electric vehicles, he said.

No Backlash Concerns

Jon Lauckner, GM's vice president of global product development, said the automaker, which is accepting billions of dollars of federal loans to stay alive as car sales have plunged and its operating losses have soared, isn't concerned about a possible Congressional backlash because it named a South Korean battery cell maker as its first supplier for the Volt.

Concerns about the lack of a U.S.-based advanced battery business have been growing over the past year along with efforts to wean the U.s. from its dependence on imported oil by developing electric vehicles.

But there are no significant lithium-ion battery producers in the U.S. right now and GM needed the batteries "now, to get the Volt on the road by the end of next year," Lauckner said.

GM will continue wortking with other battery cell companies, including Massachussets-based A123 Systems, which was competing withLG Chem for the Volt contract, and sees enough business developing 'to support several [battery] companies and technologies," Lauckner said.

The new battery pack manufacturing plant, which GM intends to build in Michigan, will assemble the individual battery cells supplied by LG into massive packs that will power the Volt.

Production by Early 2010

Lauckner said GM expects the first battery packs to roll out of the factory by the end of the first quarter of 2010.

In his comments, Wagoner said the new battery R&D lab that GM is building also will be in Michigan ("pending negotiatiosn with state and local authorities" over things such as building permits and tax breaks andother incentives) and will be the largest such lab in the U.S.

Michigan recently approved a $335 million incentive program to lure battery makers to the state, which is reeling from yearsof layoffs and plant closings by embattled U.S. automakers.

Wagoner also said GM plans to add more than 200 advanced battery engineers and technicians to its R&D staff to help "ramp up in-house capabilities."

GM also will partner with theUniversity of Michigan's engineering schol, he said, to set up an advanced battery lab at the school's main campus in Ann Arbor and to begin a curriculum aimed at developing a new generation of advanced battery engineers.