Ultium uses pretty standard high nickel batteries. You wont find a huge difference in cobalt content between the major battery producers. Pretty much all of them are pushing cobalt out of their high nickel cathodes but nobody has really managed that yet.
They are building this plant right up the road from me. It is huge. Displaced a large section of farm land they had bought when building out the Saturn plant.
Not really. This is basically the Tesla playbook from 2014. Sign large capx sharing deal with battery maker for a new factory. Ultium is pretty traditional type of platform, nothing really amazing about it. Comparable to the MEB platform from VW but VW had it out for much longer.
Tesla has vehicles selling today with batteries from 4 different battery makers (Panasonic, LG, CATL and Tesla). In addition they use a multitude of different cell types, 2170, 4680, 18650 and some prismatic as well. That is what you need to be able to handle if are the largest consumer of batteries on the plant.
GM basically makes zero BEV right now and they will slowly start with these Ultium batteries over the next couple years. Essentially they way, way behind. And of course they don't even have plans to make their own cells the way Tesla did.
BYD and VW are far more real in terms of competition.
I simply don’t understand it. As a Tesla investor from IPO (no current holdings besides a sentimental single paper share), it was exceedingly clear during investor presentations that cells were going to be the bottleneck to mass EV production, and the gigafactory methodology was the path to success. Why did legacy automakers make no effort? My only explanation is that they thought I’d that they were overly confident in the status quo.
People don't remember now, but electric vehicles were not consider something that would be broadly adopted then.
And of course GM/Ford and others would simply let suppliers take car of that. Ford last CEO less then 2 years ago said things like 'there is no need to invest in battery factories, we can just buy them on the open market'. Of course since then the new CEO made a major deal with SK.
- The Volt was a transition vehicle but it cost too much to build in volumes.
- They are selling 2 versions on the Bolt platform. The standard Bolt and the EUV.
- GM started selling small numbers of the Hummer on Ultium last last year.
- The Cadillac Lyriq began shipping to customers last month.
Next year, they have 3 models scheduled to launch: Silverado pickup, Blazer CUV, and the much less expensive Equinox. This battery plant is the first of 3 that they are building in the US.
I know all of these things, and not sure why you are bringing it up.
They had to mostly halt Bolt production and for the last 6 month have produce very few EVs. I didn't say GM has never ever made an EV before.
But just go threw why saying 4th EV platform makes no sense.
EV1 wasn't a platform, and it wasn't even Li-Ion. It was just a low volume compliance car. It really wasn't a prototype except looking at it in retrospect.
The Volt is PHEV and can hardly be-considered an iteration of a BEV platform. Sure it gave them some experience with electrics but that is very different from a platform.
The Bolt was essentially LG conversion. LG did everything from cells, batteries, electronics including the 'infotainment' system. It really wasn't an EV platform as traditionally understood.
The Ultium is the first of what we might consider an actual BEV platform for GM.
And again non of that touches my central argument, they are miles behind Tesla. I don't think that is a remotely controversial thing to say to anybody interest in BEV.
I don't know enough to compare to others' with it being proprietary and using less cobolt perhaps making it significant for GM.