GM Invests in Next-Generation Battery Facility
General Motors announced the Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center, an all-new facility that will significantly expand the company’s battery technology operations and accelerate development and commercialization of longer range, more affordable electric vehicle batteries. The Wallace Center will be located on the campus of GM’s Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.
The facility will play a pivotal role in advancing GM’s vision of an all-electric future and help pave the way to widespread adoption of EVs, building on more than a decade of advanced battery development at GM Research and Development. GM will also use the facility to integrate the work of GM-affiliated battery innovators, helping the company to reach its stated goal of at least 60 percent lower battery costs with the next generation of Ultium. The Wallace Center is currently under construction and will be completed in mid-2022. Designed for expansion, the facility is projected to grow up to at least three times its initial footprint, with room for additional investments, as demand for EVs increases. The facility is expected to build its first prototype cells in the fourth quarter of 2022.
The Wallace Center will allow GM to accelerate new technologies like lithium-metal, silicon and solid-state batteries, along with production methods that can quickly be deployed at battery cell manufacturing plants, including GM’s joint ventures with LG Energy Solution in Lordstown, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tennessee, and other undisclosed locations in the U.S.
The facility will connect GM’s network of battery development sites located on its Global Technical Center campus. These sites include GM’s Research and Development Chemical and Materials’ Subsystems Lab that currently leads the company’s battery development, including its pioneering work on lithium-metal anodes, and the Estes Battery Systems Lab, the largest battery validation lab in North America at more than 100,000 square feet. The Estes Lab enables GM to perform major battery durability tests in-house at the cell, module and pack levels.
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