General Motors is building a new facility for cell and battery technology

Oct, 2021 - By WMR

The first phase of the Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center, and will be situated on the site of GM's Global Technical Center, is currently in progress and is scheduled to be finished in 2022.

Bill Wallace, a director of General Motors who headed the team that created the battery storage in Chevrolet Bolt EV, Malibu Hybrid, Volt 1, and Volt 2, is honored with the facility's name. GM has labs and an R&D center dedicated to the creation of more affordable and energy-dense batteries. This new facility is meant to connect all efforts, which include work performed at its battery systems labs as well as the subsystems of chemicals and material.

GM plans to produce batteries with a power density of around 1,200 watt-hours per liter while reducing prices by 60%. The objective is ambitious, even extravagant, in some ways. It is also regarded as a vital step for GM to participate with all the other automakers, all of which have indicated goals to transition to an all-electric or mostly-electric vehicle range. The Ultium platform and Ultium lithium-ion batteries are now the core of GM's transition to EVs. The new electric design and battery systems, that were unveiled in 2020, will enable a diverse variety of goods across its divisions, including cars, trucks, and SUVs. The Wallace Center is an important element of GM's plan to develop cells that will serve as the foundation for more economical EVs with greater range in the coming years.

Furthermore, the facility will be capable of producing large-format model lithium-metal battery cells for automotive applications, as opposed to the small-scale lithium-metal cells normally utilized for handsets or research purposes. These cells, which will be based on GM's unique formula, might reach 1,000 mm in size, about double the size of the first Ultium pouch cells.