GM Announces $3B Investment in U.S. Battery Production, Q1 Financial Results

General Motors Co. in Detroit and Samsung SDI today announced they plan to invest more than $3 billion to build a new battery cell manufacturing plant in the U.S. that is scheduled to begin operations in 2026.
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Cadillac LYRIQ
The Cadillac LYRIQ is just one of GM’s EV models that saw increased sales in the first quarter of 2023. // Photo courtesy of GM

General Motors Co. in Detroit and Samsung SDI today announced they plan to invest more than $3 billion to build a new battery cell manufacturing plant in the U.S. that is scheduled to begin operations in 2026.

This news came on the same day GM announced it earned $2.4 billion in net income attributable to stockholders during the first quarter of 2023.

“GM’s supply chain strategy for EVs is focused on scalability, resiliency, sustainability, and cost-competitiveness. Our new relationship with Samsung SDI will help us achieve all these objectives,” says Mary Barra, chair and CEO of GM. “The cells we will build together will help us scale our EV capacity in North America well beyond 1 million units annually.”

The plant will have more than 30 GWh of capacity and will bring GM’s total U.S. battery cell capacity to about 160 GWh when it is at full production. The companies plan to jointly operate the facility, and it is projected to have production lines to build nickel-rich prismatic and cylindrical cells.

GM and Samsung SDI are not announcing the location of the plant or employment projections at this time. However, the number of new jobs in construction and operations are expected to number in the thousands.  As customer demand for EVs rises, GM will continue to scale its supply chain and operations, including cell production and vehicle assembly.

“It is a great pleasure to take the very first step to create a long-term industry-leading partnership with GM in the U.S. EV market,” says Yoon-ho Choi, president and CEO of Samsung SDI. “We will do our best to provide the products featuring the highest levels of safety and quality produced with our unrivalled technologies to help GM strengthen its leadership in the EV market.”

According to Doug Parks, GM executive vice president of global product development, purchasing, and supply chain, the new joint venture with Samsung SDI will leverage the capital and technology of both companies to create new competitive advantages for GM.

“We will continue to scale production and optimize the chemistry of our pouch cells for performance, range and cost using new approaches pioneered at GM’s Wallace Battery Center and by our technology partners,” says Park. “The introduction of new cell form factors will allow us to expand into even more segments more quickly and integrate cells directly into battery packs to reduce weight, complexity and costs. With multiple strong cell partners, we can scale our EV business faster than we could going it alone.”

The Ultium Platform was strategically designed to accept multiple cell form factors and chemistries. For example, in China, the Cadillac LYRIQ is powered by prismatic cells applied to the same battery packs used in the U.S.

This announcement comes after GM has previously stated that the company plans to produce 400,000 EVs over the course of 2022, 2023, and the first half of 2024, including 50,000 EVs in North America in the first half of this year, and double that in the second half.

Barra also stated that in the weeks and months ahead, GM will be sharing news about the company’s growing portfolio of Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, and BrightDrop EVs. This includes demonstrating that “work” and “range” are not mutually exclusive terms for the Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV.

In other GM news, the company released figures today showing that it first-quarter 2023 revenue was $40 billion, net income attributable to stockholders was $2.4 billion, and EBIT-adjusted was $3.8 billion.

In a letter to shareholders, Barra stated that in “the U.S. market, we led the industry in retail and fleet deliveries, commercial deliveries, and truck sales. We also earned the largest year-over-year increase in market share of any automaker with strong production and inventory discipline, and consistent pricing.”

Barra further wrote that GM delivered more than 20,000 EVs, due to the third consecutive quarter of record Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV deliveries and rising Cadillac LYRIQ sales. The company is now No. 2 in the U.S. market (behind Tesla) and has increased its EV market share by 8 percentage points.

GM released figures showing that the company is No. 1 in both fleet and commercial sales in North America. The company will begin deliveries of the Silverado EV late in the second quarter of 2023, and the Blazer EV will be launched this summer.

As GM looks at the performance of the business and the opportunities ahead of the company, it projects full-year 2023 earnings guidance to a range of $11 billion to $13 billion.