This is the Ultium battery from
General Motors, the largest American auto manufacturer is
going all in on EVs, General Motors, we believe in an
all electric future. We're working to a goal where we have
zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion. GM CEO Mary Barra believes the
company will dominate the US market, we're going to be number one mid decade in
EVs in the US. And this is the battery
technology that is going to take it there. It starts with a single cell
that we can use as a brick that we can build all these different
vehicles with. And that Altium cell then will go into a Hummer,
a LYRIQ or any other vehicle that we dream off in a very
quick fashion. GM plans to invest $35 billion
in electric and autonomous vehicles by 2025. It plans to
have manufacturing capacity for 1 million EVs and is scheduled
to launch more than 30 electric vehicles globally over that same
time period. Many will utilize the new platform, the whole company, we intend to
have all light duty vehicles be EVs by 2035. GM is also building a commercial
Evie business under the bright drop brand name. It has begun
delivering vehicles to FedEx and has signed a contract with
Walmart. But it is hard to find a carmaker of any significant
size that is not working on an electric vehicle. And there are
countless startups all around the world. So what makes GM's
Ultium platform technology different. We've got the right partners
with our three factories making these cells with algae. And now
we're gonna make the world's best Brekke to make the world's
best vehicles. CNBC went inside GM's battery
lab to see how it is different from what Tesla and other evey
battery makers are doing and how GM plans to become a major
player in the Evie market. What we have here is a lithium
ion battery. And this is our large format lithium ion battery
that powers all these vehicles. Tim grew is the general director
of electrification strategy and cell engineering at General
Motors. GM unveiled its Ultium platform in March of 2020. It is
a whole new architecture for electric vehicles. It
encompasses new battery designs, new motors, platforms, and even
new software for electric vehicles. We're at what we call the STS
Development Center, where basically we bring all the
ingredients for Altium together and we make sure that they work
properly together and as individual components. GM partnered with the battery
cell manufacturing giant LG energy solutions to develop the
Ultium battery. The partnership is opening three battery
factories across the United States between 2022 and 2024,
one in Ohio, one in Tennessee and one Michigan. For the first time we've got a
single Altium cell that can be the foundational brick to build
all of these vehicles together. And with that we're scaling it. GM has already teased unveiled
announced or begun producing several fully electric vehicles
using the Ultium platform. The GMC Hummer pickup and Hummer
SUV, the Cadillac Lyrik premium SUV and Celestica sedan, the
Chevrolet Silverado Evie full size pickup truck, the Chevrolet
blazer and a fully electric version of the Corvette. Battery
technology is complex but a battery generates electricity
through a chemical reaction. A battery is made up of an anode,
a cathode, a mix of chemicals that separates the anode and
cathode and an electrolyte. When the battery is discharging, ie
generating electricity ions move from the anode end to the
cathode end when charging ions move in the opposite direction. The positive in the negative
have these nice I call them parking garages, right where you
can store the lithium when it's all the way charged and they're
all parked in the negative side we call it the anode. When they
discharged, they go and they park in the positive side. And
then the separator basically makes the traffic lane so that
all happens very uniformly and can last the life of the
vehicle. There are several things that
make the Altium platform different. It is say some
industry analysts the first large scale use of a new battery
chemistry. The new chemistry considerably reduces the content
of some very expensive and tough to source materials. Evie
batteries often use chemistries that rely on cobalt, often in
combination with nickel manganese are other elements.
Tesla, for example, has been known to use a combination of
nickel cobalt and aluminum in many of its cars. However, it
has recently been trying to move toward cobalt free battery
designs. GM is partnership with LG Energy Solutions has
developed a different chemistry it reduces the cobalt by 70%.
This nickel manganese cobalt aluminum is one of the primary
factors that will drive Ultium battery pack costs below $100
per kilowatt hour that is a threshold the entire industry is
trying to hit to make EVs cost competitive with internal
combustion cars. GM has also taken the unusual step of
developing a new battery management system that manages
the battery at a more granular level than others. Most battery
management systems including Tesla's work at the pack level
GM's system manages the battery at the level of individual
modules. This will allow GM to replace parts of a battery pack
bit by bit over time if needed, rather than replacing the whole
pack at once. It also means GM doesn't need to stock old
battery parts. Newer battery technology can be put into an
old team pack alongside older technology and the pack will
still function. Your cell phone has a pouch
battery in it, or your tablet has a pouch battery in it, but
they're obviously not automotive batteries. And so what we do
with our approach is we say well, we make it more robust, we
add more installation, we make sure it can last the life of the
vehicle in our pouches. The idea of a pouch design is
not unique to GM. But GM says there are aspects of its design
that are proprietary. It's generic, but how we make it
is very unique. Cells are tightly packed side by
side which reduces the space between that allows for more
energy capacity. The design is flexible and can accommodate
cells of other shapes. GM's vehicles in China don't use the
long cell design seen in the US. They instead use something
called a prismatic can a shorter, wider box. So this isn't an example of a
prismatic can. It's got the same electrode in it as the actual
you know, flat stacked one here, you simply wind it up inside of
it. China is the world's largest
Evie market. GM sold 2.9 million vehicles in China in 2021. Sales
of new plug in hybrids and electrics collectively called
New Energy vehicles, or N EVs and China rose considerably. Its
Buick VW elite and Evie family doubled sales year over year. Do you think I'll just China
alone 15 20% of the world's market, they're going to be
almost entirely electric in the next five years, or 2025 plan.
In China, GM sells more electric cars and Tesla cell modules can be stacked
vertically or horizontally as the vehicle design requires.
They can be double stacked to include up to 24 modules in a
truck, for example, or there could just be one single layer
of modules in the sports car. This is basically a LYRIQ pack
that you see right in front of you. So it's got all this
structure integrated into it. So that can be part of the vehicle
and there's 12 of those modules in here to meet the LYRIQ's
needs. Now you can imagine if you have an equinox, it'll be
less than 12 and it'll just be a shorter pack. And Ultium battery pack can
provide up to 450 miles of range on a charge at a quarter of the
weight and about 40% of the cost of GM's previous battery
designs. A vehicle with 450 miles on a single charge would
place among the longest range vehicles available in the United
States. Only the Lucid Air dream edition outpaces it with an
estimated 520 models. The Tesla Model S has a 405 mile range around 2008 We said people
really want an Eevee and we made the volt extended range Evie
whereas a very capable 50 mile Evie 2016 We came out with a
bowl TV which was a tuner in 38 mile Evie, the volt extended
range made it possible. The bowl TV in 2016 made it practical,
you can use the car and now with things like the Hummer and the
LYRIQ is preferred. If GM's Ultium battery pack does
have a per kilowatt hour cost of less than $100. That would put
it in territory competitors have not been able to reach that's still the target that
everybody's trying to get to is under $100 per kilowatt hour.
Tesla's been under $100 a kilowatt hour at the cell level
for a while now. Because they use those cylindrical cells and
they're they're cheaper to make but the way they make their pack
is more complex. So that offsets some of that savings on the
sell. These batteries will be powering
Ultium drive electric motors which GM unveiled in September
2021. The first vehicle the system will be featured on is
the GMC Hummer. General Motors was the first automaker to make
a serious attempt at a mass market EV its Evie one was only
available for lease in limited numbers in the late 1990s. Its
first fully electric vehicle after that was the Chevrolet
Bolt first introduced for the 2017 model year. But like all
automakers it has been largely overshadowed and outsold in the
US Evie market by industry leader Tesla with Ultium The
company is trying to take the lead again. They obviously don't get
anywhere remotely close to anything in the same
stratosphere as Tesla in terms of their business but they've
got to show that their Evie business really works if they
haven't. Yet. Some industry experts are
skeptical the GM's Ultium technology is in any way ahead
of the curve. Monroe and Associates is a manufacturing
consultancy that is known in the auto industry for its tear downs
and analyses of electric vehicles and battery packs. We are tasked with investigating
every Eevee that is, that is being manufactured that is
leading in the world. Stupid, said Monroe and
Associates has not been able to yet tear down and Altium based
vehicle, they are basing their opinions on what GM is saying
about the Altium platform and what the firm has found in its
other research and tear downs. My broad impression of the
Ultium platform is it it's a really good idea. But it's five
to seven years too late, many of the virtues that they're
extolling in their marketing campaigns, particularly with the
form factors of the cell, the energy density, the reduction of
wiring, the layout and configuration of the motors are
already being done. If you study the market, we can draw
parallels in the battery to VW 84. I can't draw very many
parallels the Tesla because the form factor in chemistry is
different. Take battery chemistry, for
example. Well GM's battery chemistry has reduced cobalt
content. Eliminating cobalt altogether
from the battery portfolio is something that many
manufacturers have done. Tesla is using cobalt free
lithium ion phosphate cells in its Chinese models. And
everything that I read on GM strategy,
they're primarily sticking to that I think nickel, manganese,
cobalt aluminum chemistry, which does have some advantages, but
still having some cobalt, I want to see elimination of cobalt in
some of their chemistry choices. That said, there are some
features that are notable. The fact that you know, they're
designing everything from scratch, for this thing. You
know, it's all purpose built for EVs is a good thing, it gives
them the opportunity to really optimize all of the systems for
an Eevee that's probably, in theory at least, should help
them. GM says the next generation of
Ultium will offer twice the energy density at 60% of the
cost. We've made announcements about
our lithium metal technology, which is much higher energy
density very capable to make it happen. And that's the true
entrepreneur really going to change the world type stuff. As with many other battery
technologies, there are many companies working on lithium
metal batteries, Ford, BMW, Volkswagen and others are
investing in them. Perhaps the true test of Ultium cells will
come once people start getting behind the wheel. I think the Cadillac LYRIQ is
really going to be our first real look at what the true
possibilities are. With the Ultium platform. The Cadillac LYRIQ will be GM's
first crossover to market with Altium cells and will come in a
size and shape that will more closely resemble the crossovers
and SUVs customers are buying. with a starting price of around
$60,000 The LYRIQ increases jams chances of being profitable on
each vehicle. It also positions GM to directly challenge leaders
like Tesla. Another top selling segment where GM is securing a
toehold is the full size pickup truck. This is the best selling
segment overall in America and one dominated by American
manufacturers, especially Ford and GM. Ford and GM were both really
surprised by the demand when they announced their electric
pickup trucks. GM unveiled the Chevrolet
Silverado Evie at CES in January 2022. In late April, the company
said it already had over 140,000 reservations for the truck.
We're seeing a real shift from the market
towards EVs, a lot of customer pull for EVs. And that's caught
a lot of manufacturers by surprise. And so they're
scrambling now to figure out how do they get enough materials to
build all the batteries for what they perceive is the demand for
these things. And this is this is the next big challenge for
everybody.
No one needs to dominate,everyone needs to iterate. Quickly.
The competition is great for all of us. I hope they are right, and hope they are successful.
Whatever you say man. Just keep electrifying your fleet and cranking out as many EVs as possible. That’s all I care about.
ID4 owner and quite likely a future Bolt owner once my 2015 Focus shits the bed. Which may be sooner rather than later with the known transmission problems. I feel like I’m rolling the dice every time I drive that thing lol
Let's see GM execute. 👍
There's a supply problem, not a demand problem for EV. Everyone should make some money.
I thought it was an interesting video. I didn’t choose the title btw.
Pretty cool and exciting. The Munro guy makes a point though that lots of innovative ideas are already being implemented but without the big marketing push that Ultium has.
I own a Bolt and absolutely love it. However, I don't care if it's Ultium, Duracell, Alkaline, nuclear, wind powered... Who cares. Just please use something better than a 55kW fast charger in newer Bolts. 55kW fast charger in 2022 what the actual f$ck?
they look like amazing packs. the wireless bms is pretty cool. the Hummer obviously has amazing performance. they just need to crank out some crossovers now. get it done GM!