General Motors: History, Innovation, Legacy
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- Last year, GM recycled production scraps from two Altium Cell battery plants in Warren, Ohio and Spring Hill, Tennessee, using redwood materials.
The spent batteries on General Motors vehicles may soon supply power to the Artificial Intelligence Center.
The Detroit automaker has signed a “non-binding memorandum” to deploy new electric vehicle batteries for storage systems that power Nevada’s microgrids.
GM defines terms of the transaction as a business plan that outlines the automaker’s intentions to advance the deployment of energy storage systems to enhance America’s grid resilience.
This will expand our existing partnership with Redwood Materials. It announced in May 2024 that it would recycle production scraps from two Altium Cell battery plants in Warren, Ohio and Spring Hill, Tennessee. Ultium Cells is a joint battery cell manufacturing venture between GM and LG Energy Solution.
These GM EV batteries already power Redwood’s microgrids in Nevada, which support AI infrastructure company Crusoe. Its installation can provide 12 megawatts of power at any instant, with the total capacity of the site being 63 megawatts hours, GM said.
“The market for grid-scale batteries and backup power is becoming an essential infrastructure, not just expanding,” said Kurt Keltie, Vice President of Battery at GM. “The demand for electricity is rising and just accelerates. To address that challenge, the US needs energy storage solutions that can be deployed quickly and economically and made at home here. GM batteries can play an essential role.”
Battery recycling business
The news comes soon after some announcements made by GM regarding investments in electric vehicle promotion. Earlier this week, GM and LG said they would expand production of lithium-iron phosphate battery cells, a low-cost alternative to nickel-rich batteries that companies produce together at their Ultium facility in Tennessee.
Founded and operated by former Tesla Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel, Redwood materials also partner with Toyota Motor, Ford Motor, Volvo, Volkswagen and Audi to extract lithium, nickel and cobalt from “end of life” battery packs. Redwood materials, according to their website, remanufacture these materials into cathodes.
“Both GM’s second LIFE EV battery and new batteries can be deployed in Redwood’s energy storage system, providing fast, flexible power solutions and enhancing the independence of America’s energy and manufacturing,” Straubel said in a statement.
GM’s agreement with Redwood allows us to enter new businesses as well as partner LG energy solutions in the race to build batteries that support the US electric grid and drive the growing demand for artificial intelligence.
The country’s largest Korean battery manufacturer completed an expansion in Netherlands, Michigan last month, investing more than $1.4 billion after manufacturing batteries for storage systems.
The factory, which has been in operation since 2012, also produces automotive vehicle batteries for partners such as General Motors, Honda and Hyundai Motors.
Still, collaborations with Redwood Materials to deploy energy storage systems will not result in direct competition with joint venture partners. Rather, this expansion requires the use of a new GM manufacturing battery pack made from cells in Ultium Cells JVs with LG energy solutions, and a second-life GM EV battery with Redwood Materials that integrates GM battery technology into the battery energy storage system.
Make a contract
According to Tony Flanagan, partnerships between automotive and industrial practices at Alixpartners, the automotive and industrial practices trend is growing, but they are still in the early stages and we don’t know how well the business model is working.
The investment required to get battery recycling operations up and running is substantial, and the revenue streams of US automakers are difficult to predict due to the changes in mercury facing the North American EV environment.
“It appears that Europe and China have a better business model for these partnerships. This sees the global supply of EV batteries to be recycled to get back on track in 2028 will be driven by growth outside the US,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Energy said in a report on data center energy use in the US last December that data center load growth has tripled over the past decade, and is projected to double or triple again by 2028. Meanwhile, redwood materials expect 100,000 EVs to be recycled by the end of 2025.
EV battery life
Just because batteries are no longer useful in electric vehicles doesn’t mean they’re useless, according to Liz Najman, director of market insights at EV research firm and Shopping Resource Recurrent. In 2025, new electric vehicles will produce an average of 93 kilowatts of batteries.
Depending on the manufacturer, if approximately 70 kilowatt hours remain, it is considered the end of the electric vehicle.
“If you lose that 30% in battery capacity, you lose about 30% of the range and negative. For many, that’s no longer satisfying,” she told the Free Press. “It’s not just about losing battery capacity. It’s about losing energy supply. That’s what power is.”
Even on road vehicles for more than five years, batteries in decommissioned electric vehicles could last another 10-20 years before officially expires, but the technology wasn’t long enough to specify an accurate life expectancy, Najman said.
According to Najman, microgrids like one GM EV battery are more resilient, cost-effective and exempt from the process of condition-regulated utility than traditional energy grids.
“We don’t really know. There are no modern lithium-ion batteries and have been in use for a long time,” she said. “I don’t know how long the batteries in these vehicles will be useful, but they’re longer than people expect.”
Jackie Charniga covers General Motors for the Free Press. I’ll reach her jcharniga@freepress.com.
