GM’s Ultium battery gets the ultimatum
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge
GM will discontinue the Ultium battery brand name as it looks to expand the types of cells and chemistries it uses in its electric vehicles.
During an investor event today, Kurt Kelty, GM’s VP of batteries and a former Tesla executive, announced plans to adopt lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery technology in order to decrease the cost of its EVs by “up to $6,000.” GM uses the more common nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) batteries in its Ultium platform.
Some automakers are using LFP-based cells already, including Tesla and Ford. There’s less complexity in LFP, they cost less to produce, and they aren’t dependent on the excessive cobalt used in NCM batteries. Cobalt has a bad rep as the “blood diamond of batteries,” and many automakers…