GM says fourth battery plant ‘very much on track,’ envisions others

General Motors Co. is still planning a fourth battery plant and even more beyond that despite the reported breakup with supplier and partner LG Energy Solution.

GM and LG Energy Solution through their Ultium Cells LLC joint venture initially planned to have four U.S. battery cell manufacturing plants together. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported and The Detroit News confirmed that the companies were no longer moving forward together on the fourth plant.

Mike Kelecava and Ryan Miely inspect a battery cell as it proceeds through the cell assembly line at the Ultium Cells LLC plant in Warren, Ohio. A top GM official said Tuesday that the automaker still plans a fourth U.S. battery plant despite the end of plans to develop it with LG Energy Solution.

GM CFO Paul Jacobson, on a Tuesday earnings results call, said the automaker’s fourth battery cell manufacturing center is “very much on track,” and he noted capacity has been expanded at two other planned plants with LG Energy Solution. The first Ultium Cells plant is open in northeast Ohio. An Ultium Cells plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, will open later this year and a third plant under construction in Delta Township near Lansing will open in 2024. GM and LG had been considering a site in New Carlisle, Indiana, for the location of another Ultium plant.

“We’re going to have far more than four plants as we go through this journey,” Jacobson said. “So this is a pretty ordered approach over time.”

But Jacobson wouldn’t specify what company GM would be partnered with on the fourth battery plant and others following that.

“I’m not going to comment on our partnership strategy,” Jacobson said. “What I will tell you is we’ve got a great relationship with LG. We’re focused on scaling up cell production at plant one and working well together.”

GM will need the cells from the Ultium plants to meet its EV expectations. The automaker intends to make 400,000 EVs by the first half of 2024 and 1 million annually in 2025. GM is launching the electric Chevrolet Silverado this year, as well as the Equinox and Blazer. Yesterday, GMC announced it had launched production of the Hummer EV SUV at Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center.

“We’ll obviously be at a significantly higher run rate in the back half of this year than what we’re starting and it’s really all indexed to cell capacity,” Jacobson said. “As we ramp up Lordstown and continue to move forward on plants two and three, you’re going to see volumes increase pretty significantly over that time period.”