On Wednesday, the U.S. largest automaker by market share, General Motors announced a joint venture with South Korean advanced materials producer POSCO Chemical aimed at scaling production of GM’s Ultium batteries for EV cars and trucks. The partners will jointly build a North American factory to process Cathode Active Materials (CAM), a key battery component that represents about 40 percent of the cost of a battery cell. According to a statement from GM, the location of the factory, which it says will open in 2024 and create “hundreds” of jobs, will be announced at a later date.
“Our work with POSCO Chemical is a key part of our strategy to rapidly scale U.S. EV production and drive innovation in battery performance, quality and cost,” GM’s EVP in charge of Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain, Doug Parks, said. “We are building a sustainable and resilient North America-focused supply chain for EVs covering the entire ecosystem from raw materials to battery cell manufacturing and recycling.”
“We are very pleased to participate in the global battery supply chain project with General Motors,” POSCO Chemical CEO Kyungzoon Min said. “Through close partnership, we will innovate battery materials and contribute to accelerate the adoption of EVs based on our world-class product development, mass production capacity, and raw materials competitiveness.”
While the location of the new facility has not been announced, GM says it will supply the Ultium cell facilities that GM and LG Energy Solution are building in Lordstown, Ohio and Spring Hill, Tennessee. Two more U.S.-based Ultium cell plants are planned by mid-decade as GM seeks to drive mass adoption of EVs with high-volume Ultium-powered EVs, including a Chevrolet crossover priced around $30,000.
GM has committed to invest $35 billion from 2020 to 2025 in EV and autonomous vehicles, aiming to have launched more than 30 EV models globally by that time. The company hopes that more than two-thirds of those models will be available in the U.S., earning U.S. market share leadership in EVs as it targets more than 1 million annual EV sales worldwide by 2025. From a cost standpoint, the company wants to drive first-generation costs for its Ultium cell to 40 percent below the cost of cells used in the original Chevrolet Bolt EV. As it achieve these milestones, GM also hopes to double its yearly revenues from a five-year average of around $140 billion by the end of the decade, expand margins, and grow EV revenue from about $10 billion in 2023 to $90 billion by 2030.
