Inside General Motors’ fast-growing battery labs in suburban Detroit, scientists and engineers are analyzing stresses on lithium-ion cells: desert heat, arctic cold, jungle humidity, enough charging and discharging for a half-dozen Frankenstein reboots.
For The Verge’s exclusive tour of these secretive labs, I watch researchers peer at cell chemistries down to the atomistic level, using electron microscopes. Others work at a larger scale, all the way up to the Megashaker. Inside a cavernous hall, an enormous sliding test chamber envelops one of GM’s double-stacked, 205-kilowatt-hour battery packs — the type that powers hulking models like the Cadillac Escalade IQ.
The 2,900-pound pack is suspended in midair from a ceiling-mounted crane, bolted to a surrounding structure to mimic its connection to a moving vehicle. Like a lithium-soaked smoothie, the battery is hydraulically shaken in the atmospherically controlled chamber, simulating anything from potholes to low-speed collisions. With dozens of test chambers for individual cells, modules, or entire packs, GM can simulate 10 years and 250,000 miles of real-world battery use and abuse in about six months.
GM can simulate 10 years and 250,000 miles of real-world battery use and abuse in about six months
That real world has become especially abusive to EVs. Some consumers have grown ambivalent, in part due to stubbornly high prices. Pollution and fuel-economy rules face an anachronistic rollback, encouraging automakers to lean into fossil-fueled cars. In the latest indignity, the $7,500 federal clean-car credits, beloved by EV buyers and a wellspring of sales for GM and other automakers, have been choked off by the Trump administration. All that took a $1.6 billion toll on GM’s bottom line this week, in the form of a writedown on third-quarter earnings.
GM directly attributed that $1.6 billion loss to the Trump administration eliminating credits and loosening emissions rules. The dirty ripples from those moves will surely be more polluting internal combustion engine (ICE) cars on the roads, and fewer EVs, as GM and other automakers scale back production to match lowered expectations for consumer demand. For all their sleek new models and multibillion-dollar investments, GM and other automakers continue to lose money on the electric side of the business. And this was before all these new headwinds began to blow.
GM must somehow withstand these industry shake-ups and stresses. But even as it plays defense by shoring up its ICE business, GM plans to keep on the EV offensive. Inside its sprawling Technical Center, the classic midcentury campus designed by Eero Saarinen, GM brings a 21st-century weapon to light: lithium manganese rich batteries, or LMR.
The Megashaker, which tests EV battery durability. Image: GM
Is LMR the real deal?
Some analysts and investors keep saying Detroit has little chance of competing with China on the global EV stage. GM executives and engineers beg to differ, even as the Trump administration kneecaps the top-down energy and manufacturing policies and government supports that China used to go from automotive also-ran to a dominant force in EVs and batteries.
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