GM’s electric future depends on a new battery — and this facility
GM’s electric future depends on a new battery — and this facility
通用汽车的电动未来取决于一款新电池——以及这座工厂
Hidden among the architectural landmarks of General Motors’ sprawling Warren Tech Center outside Detroit is a new cornerstone of the automaker’s $900 million bet on its electric future. The nondescript 500,000-square-foot pair of off-white boxes, which house GM’s new Battery Cell Development Center, might not look like much. But locked inside is the key to GM’s plan to slash the cost of its EVs by nearly 10%. At a time when some car companies are pulling back on EVs, GM’s new Battery Cell Development Center is part of a reboot. And it’s one that GM told TechCrunch will allow it to bring a new slate of lower-cost batteries to market a year faster than planned.
在底特律郊外通用汽车庞大的沃伦技术中心（Warren Tech Center）的建筑群中，隐藏着这家汽车制造商为其电动未来投入 9 亿美元的全新基石。这座占地 50 万平方英尺、外观平平无奇的灰白色建筑群是通用汽车全新的电池单元开发中心（Battery Cell Development Center，简称 BCDC）。虽然它看起来并不起眼，但其中锁定的关键技术，正是通用汽车计划将其电动汽车成本削减近 10% 的核心。在一些汽车公司纷纷缩减电动汽车业务之际，通用汽车的这个新中心是其战略重启的一部分。通用汽车向 TechCrunch 表示，这将使他们能够比原计划提前一年将一系列低成本电池推向市场。
GM hasn’t been immune to the malaise in the U.S. EV market. Last year, the automaker took a $1.6 billion charge as it reconfigured its EV production capacity, laying off thousands of workers in the process. It has also reportedly shelved, if temporarily, a refresh of its full-size EV trucks and SUVs. To get its EV strategy back on track, Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery and sustainability at GM, is pinning the company’s success on a new battery chemistry known as LMR. Kelty, who previously led battery technology at Tesla, has made it his signature product in the two years he’s been with the company. “That is really going to be our bread and butter,” Kelty told TechCrunch. “That is going to be our main product line.”
通用汽车也未能幸免于美国电动汽车市场的低迷。去年，该公司在重组电动汽车产能时计提了 16 亿美元的费用，并在此过程中裁减了数千名员工。据报道，该公司还暂时搁置了全尺寸电动卡车和 SUV 的更新计划。为了让电动汽车战略重回正轨，通用汽车电池与可持续发展副总裁库尔特·凯尔蒂（Kurt Kelty）将公司的成功寄托在一种被称为 LMR 的新型电池化学技术上。凯尔蒂此前曾在特斯拉负责电池技术，在他加入通用汽车的两年里，这已成为他的标志性产品。“这确实将成为我们的核心业务，”凯尔蒂告诉 TechCrunch，“这将成为我们的主要产品线。”
Battery reboot 电池重启
GM’s halting rollout of EVs has mirrored the wider battery industry in the U.S., which over the last couple of decades has developed in fits and starts. Early startups haven’t lived up to their promise, and more recently, intense competition from Chinese companies has pushed automakers and battery manufacturers to rethink the plans they made five years ago. At GM, that pressure led to the shortened life of Ultium, the branded battery platform that underpins its current EVs. Like much of the industry, the automaker had bet heavily on a pricey yet powerful battery chemistry known as NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt). Rising materials costs and China’s dominance of key critical minerals have kept EV prices higher than expected.
通用汽车电动汽车推出的停滞不前，反映了美国整个电池行业的现状，该行业在过去几十年里发展得断断续续。早期的初创公司未能兑现承诺，而近期来自中国企业的激烈竞争，促使汽车制造商和电池厂商重新思考五年前制定的计划。在通用汽车，这种压力导致了 Ultium（支撑其当前电动汽车的品牌电池平台）的生命周期缩短。与行业内大多数公司一样，通用汽车曾重注于一种昂贵但强大的电池化学技术——NMC（镍锰钴）。材料成本的上涨以及中国在关键矿产资源上的主导地位，使得电动汽车的价格一直高于预期。
NMC won’t disappear, but at GM, it’ll be restricted to GM’s high-end vehicles. In its place, GM has been developing LMR (lithium-manganese-rich), which it says is almost as energy dense as NMC but at a cost that’s comparable to cheaper chemistries like LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) that power low-end models like the Chevrolet Bolt. When GM introduced LMR last year, it said that, in a truck like the Chevrolet Silverado EV, the new chemistry should preserve most of the vehicle’s more than 400-mile range while slashing costs by at least $6,000. For a mid-range model, that would bring it within spitting distance of the gas version.
NMC 不会消失，但在通用汽车，它将被限制在高端车型中使用。取而代之的是，通用汽车一直在开发 LMR（富锂锰基电池），据称其能量密度几乎与 NMC 持平，但成本却与 LFP（磷酸铁锂）等为雪佛兰 Bolt 等低端车型供电的廉价化学技术相当。去年通用汽车推出 LMR 时表示，在雪佛兰 Silverado EV 等卡车上，这种新化学技术在保持车辆 400 多英里续航里程的同时，可将成本降低至少 6,000 美元。对于中端车型来说，这将使其价格与燃油版车型非常接近。
Discovering a new battery chemistry is one thing. Manufacturing gigawatt-hours’ worth of it is another, especially at the pace the EV industry is moving. Facing pressure from automotive giants like BYD and battery titans like CATL, GM says it wants to get LMR vehicles on the road by 2028. GM needs the new Battery Cell Development Center to deliver if it wants to hit that deadline. The new building serves as the keystone of GM’s battery strategy. The company opened its Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center and its first gigafactory in 2022. What was missing was a way to connect the breakthroughs that emerged from Wallace to the factory floors in Tennessee and Ohio. The BCDC, as insiders call the facility, is something like a pilot line, but bigger. When fully operational, it will be capable of producing about 2,500 cells per day, or about half a gigawatt-hour per year. It will take batteries developed in small batches — about 30 to 50 per day — at the Wallace Battery Cell Research Center next door and determine if they’re ready for production.
发现一种新的电池化学技术是一回事，而制造出吉瓦时（GWh）级别的电池则是另一回事，尤其是在电动汽车行业飞速发展的当下。面对比亚迪等汽车巨头和宁德时代等电池巨头的压力，通用汽车表示希望在 2028 年前让 LMR 车型上路。如果想要实现这一目标，通用汽车需要新的电池单元开发中心（BCDC）发挥作用。这座新建筑是通用汽车电池战略的基石。该公司于 2022 年开设了华莱士电池单元创新中心（Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center）及其首个超级工厂。此前缺失的是一种将华莱士中心取得的突破性成果转化为田纳西州和俄亥俄州工厂实际生产能力的方法。BCDC（内部人士对该设施的称呼）类似于一条中试线，但规模更大。全面投入运营后，它每天将能够生产约 2,500 个电池单元，即每年约 0.5 吉瓦时。它将接收隔壁华莱士电池单元研究中心小批量开发（每天约 30 到 50 个）的电池，并确定它们是否已准备好投入生产。
Mastering the battery recipe 掌握电池配方
Many recipes for new batteries fail to deliver when they’re spun up to commercial scale, and companies don’t have years to work out the kinks. If a new chemistry can’t hit 85% yield within 18 months on a production line, it shouldn’t be considered commercially viable, according to a McKinsey report. The challenges are similar to using a recipe intended for a family of four and scaling it up to a wedding reception with 400 guests. It’s not just the sheer throughput of the factory, either. Batteries that emerge from the research center are small coin cells, but the cells in an EV pack look more like a small cutting board. “Once you learn how to make the recipe in Wallace, then you’ve got to figure out, well, how do you make this in high volume?” Kelty said. “You really learn a lot going from that coin cell to the large format because it doesn’t transfer perfectly.”
许多新电池配方在扩大到商业规模时往往会失败，而公司并没有几年时间来解决这些问题。根据麦肯锡的一份报告，如果一种新化学技术在生产线上 18 个月内无法达到 85% 的良品率，就不应被视为具有商业可行性。这些挑战类似于将一个四口之家的食谱扩大到 400 人的婚宴规模。这不仅仅是工厂的产量问题。从研究中心出来的电池是小型纽扣电池，但电动汽车电池组中的电池看起来更像一块小砧板。“一旦你学会了如何在华莱士中心制作配方，你就必须弄清楚，如何进行大规模生产？”凯尔蒂说，“从纽扣电池到大尺寸电池的转变过程中，你会学到很多，因为这个过程并不能完美转化。”
The BCDC is intended to make that step less painful. A test run at the facility costs about $200,000, which is far less than at the full-size Ultium plant. When the BCDC team is confident it has the process nailed down, the transition to full production should be easier, Kelty said. “The equipment is almost the same between them, and so it shouldn’t be as hard of a handoff.” The BCDC is one or two orders of magnitude smaller than the 2.8 million-square-foot Ultium battery factory in Tennessee. The Ultium plant makes about 300,000 cells per year, or 45 gigawatt-hours’ worth. The BCDC has fewer production lines, makes about a hundredth the number of cells, and its mixing tanks, where battery materials are blended, hold 40 liters instead of 2,000. Though smaller, the BCDC is still an order of magnitude larger than the Wallace Center next door. “The BCDC is intended to bridge the gap,” Mo Gallegos, head of BCDC at GM, told TechCrunch.
BCDC 的目的就是让这一步骤变得不那么痛苦。在该设施进行一次测试运行的成本约为 20 万美元，远低于全尺寸的 Ultium 工厂。凯尔蒂表示，当 BCDC 团队确信已经掌握了工艺流程后，向全面生产的过渡应该会更容易。“它们之间的设备几乎是一样的，所以交接过程不应该那么困难。”BCDC 的规模比田纳西州占地 280 万平方英尺的 Ultium 电池工厂小一到两个数量级。Ultium 工厂每年生产约 30 万个电池单元，即 45 吉瓦时的产能。BCDC 的生产线较少，电池产量约为前者的百分之一，其混合电池材料的搅拌罐容量为 40 升，而不是 2,000 升。尽管规模较小，但 BCDC 的规模仍比隔壁的华莱士中心大一个数量级。“BCDC 的目的是填补这一空白，”通用汽车 BCDC 负责人莫·加列戈斯（Mo Gallegos）告诉 TechCrunch。
Turning to AI models 转向人工智能模型
To cut costs further, GM has b… 为了进一步削减成本，通用汽车已……