It wasn’t speculated to be like this.
By early 2024, Normal Motors was to have had half a dozen electrical automobiles promoting in quantity, all utilizing the next-generation Ultium structure it unveiled at “EV Day” in March 2020. That listing contains the Chevrolet Silverado EV, Blazer EV, and Equinox EV; the Cadillac Lyriq; and the GMC Hummer EV in two variations. This expansive rollout of recent EVs was to place GM on a course to, as The New York Occasions put it in 2022, “problem Tesla for the lead in EV gross sales earlier than the tip of the last decade.”
But, by final December, they had been all promoting at minimal charges or outright unavailable. One mannequin has been below a stop-sale order for months. Others are severely delayed. Whereas many conventional and startup automakers are scuffling with the EV transition, GM’s electrical future appears particularly stalled proper now.
That doesn’t imply it’s DOA. As of in the present day, the Hummers, the Lyriq, and a Work Truck model of the Silverado EV are on sale. About 500 Blazer EVs had been bought earlier than deliveries had been paused in December. The Equinox EV continues to be set to reach this 12 months. GM continues to disclose additional Ultium fashions from Cadillac and GMC. One other Ultium EV, the 2024 Honda Prologue, will go on sale subsequent month. GM builds that car for Honda in its Ramos Arizpe meeting plant alongside the Equinox EV; it should do the identical with the Acura ZDX that parallels the Blazer EV and Cadillac Lyriq.
All of that implies that this 12 months could also be a make-or-break one for GM’s electrical sport. However understanding the way it received to such a low level helps illustrate the various challenges forward.
GM’s Absent Ultium Vehicles
This text was initially entitled, “GM’s EVs MIA After 18 Months: WTF?” Cooler editorial heads prevailed. However now we will add element to the unusual saga of what’s been happening with the plan by Detroit’s largest carmaker to promote excessive volumes of battery-electric automobiles.
We spoke with sources deep within the EV battery world—who’ve labored with a number of automakers—to ask what they knew in regards to the Ultium issues. In all, GM has needed to overcome vital hurdles not solely with the meeting of Ultium battery modules, but in addition, individually, in software program for each car charging and a brand new infotainment system that eliminates Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
The numbers are stark. Two years in the past, in February 2022, GM mentioned it anticipated to promote 400,000 EVs by the tip of 2023. Eight months later, it rolled that date again to mid-2024. (In October, it deserted the 400,000 quantity altogether.) However its precise 2023 gross sales of Ultium EVs had been a mere 13,838. Of these, 9,155, or two-thirds had been one single mannequin: the Cadillac Lyriq. Positive, GM bought 76,000 electrical automobiles altogether, however a whopping 82% of them had been the growing older Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV—which it took out of manufacturing late final 12 months.
The low Ultium gross sales don’t stem from a scarcity of patrons. Regardless of current grim headlines suggesting in any other case, U.S. electrical car gross sales proceed to develop. Final 12 months’s had been the very best ever, in quantity and market proportion. As an alternative, GM merely hasn’t been capable of construct sufficient Ultium EVs to get the wanted shares to dealerships. Beginning final summer season, when the Blazer EV started to ship to sellers, GM executives have repeatedly needed to clarify and make excuses for the delays.
Two factors recommend these delays could also be ending. First, John Hwang, the Prologue product lead for Honda, mentioned he’s assured Honda will obtain 40,000 Prologues from GM throughout 2024, and 70,000 a 12 months beginning subsequent 12 months. Given the dismal Ultium gross sales in 2023, these totals alone are a giant leap. Second, till now, GM has been silent in regards to the specifics of the issue past high-level statements by CEO Mary Barra. This month, InsideEVs was capable of get extra particulars from Mike Anderson, GM vp for world electrification and battery programs.
Maybe unexpectedly, Anderson confirmed the car delays don’t stem from Ultium Cells LLC, the GM-LG three way partnership firm that fabricates Ultium cells. Getting a brand new cell plant as much as usable yields is a grueling course of that takes years to succeed in profitability. Panasonic, one of many world’s most competent battery makers, produced the primary cell at its Tesla Gigafactory plant in Nevada in January 2017, however even it mentioned the manufacturing facility didn’t flip worthwhile till Q1-2021.
So that you may anticipate cell provide from the Ultium Cells LLC plant in Warren, Ohio, could be the issue—however that doesn’t look like the case. Final 12 months, Anderson mentioned, the Ohio cell plant “exceeded a few of their operational effectivity targets” and “did a terrific job. Man, they killed it.”
‘A Field With Sides’
As an alternative, GM has mentioned the delays stem from issues with the automated equipment that assembles the big 9-kilowatt-hour modules that go into the battery pack of an Ultium car. Anderson described the meeting course of this fashion:
Consider it as a field, it’s received six sides. The underside of the field is a cooling plate. There are 24 cells in a field, these lengthy pouch cells, and so they’re hooked up to the cooling plate with TIM (thermal interface materials)—consider it as epoxy and a approach to switch warmth away from the cells. Then there are 5 different sides you need to put in. The highest has two ICB (interface management board) frames which can be hinged to it. The cell tabs really undergo these frames and so they get bent and welded on. The perimeters are placed on with a structural adhesive materials.
The automation gear does all of that mechanically. You push the components of the field and the cells as much as the tip of the road, robots seize the cells, they go on gravity tables, and every part is auto-cut, auto-bent. We constructed mini-stacks of cells (eight in collection, three in parallel), then we construct a mega-stack, and all of it comes collectively.
The field is put collectively in what we name a press. All these components are coming collectively and so they must press collectively good, the glue needs to be good, every part suits within the grooves, every part snaps into place. It’s been a studying train for all of us. Everybody does it their very own method, however nobody does it this fashion.
The issue, Anderson mentioned, was that this course of was very, very troublesome to stand up to hurry. The corporate began every of its module meeting strains at 5 jobs per hour, with the objective of ramping as much as 30 per hour in early 2023.
And that simply didn’t occur, regardless of months of what he mentioned had been 24-hour days to revise specs, modify drawings, modify tolerances, guarantee extra exact alignments, higher management the movement and timing of the glue, and all the opposite steps towards “getting that to run at these charges, with high quality, ensuring they’re good on the finish.”
The Thriller Integrators
The Ultium structure is the primary time GM has developed a battery system by itself.
Whereas they had been assembled in a GM plant, the batteries for each the sooner Chevy Volt plug-in hybrids and the Chevrolet Bolt EV had been largely developed by cell supplier LG. Chevrolet engineers labored alongside them, and LG designed battery packs to the packaging and efficiency specs GM supplied—however Chevy didn’t do meeting or the essential programs integration of these batteries.
The Ultium automobiles, however, are largely GM’s work. Whereas it created Ultium Cells LLC as a three way partnership firm with LG Power Methods to manufacture the cells, GM designed the modules that maintain the cells, the battery packs that maintain the modules, and the wi-fi battery-management system. Suppliers manufacture the bodily parts—Magna for battery instances and Lear for the battery-disconnect unit, as an illustration—however GM does the meeting and integration.
One supply throughout the battery business prompt to InsideEVs that GM ordered its automated module meeting system from a conventional Tier 1 provider with little expertise in high-volume electronics meeting, fairly than a agency that had already constructed module strains for different EV makers.
GM declined to establish its provider, and even to characterize the kind of firm it’s. Below repeated questioning, Chevrolet spokesperson James Cain would say solely that it was “an industrial gear provider that works throughout a number of industries, not simply automotive.” Anderson added little extra, saying solely that it was an organization with a “background in automation” with expertise shopping for subsystems like conveyors, robots, and welders, and integrating them into an entire system for bringing collectively advanced assemblies.
“However no one has expertise doing this job; I’ll put it that method, proper?” Anderson laughed. He declined to call names or “name out any specific suppliers or something like that.” He additionally famous GM has multiple automation provider or integrator. However, he burdened, “Nobody’s actually executed it at this price and this scale, together with ourselves.”
Repeated Excuses; Barra ‘Upset’
After what was anticipated to be a gradual ramp in 2022, final 12 months was supposed to be the large 12 months for Ultium quantity. That didn’t occur. And regardless of many headlines highlighting its EV delays, GM has been exceptionally cagey about what went unsuitable. Discussing Q2 ends in July, Barra mentioned:
We now have skilled sudden delays within the ramp-up as a result of our automation gear provider has been scuffling with supply points which can be constraining module meeting capability. We’re engaged on a number of fronts to place this behind us … now we have deployed groups from GM manufacturing engineering to work on-site with our automation provider to enhance supply occasions … now we have added handbook module meeting strains.
To compensate, she mentioned, the corporate would set up extra module capability in any respect of its North American EV vegetation. These embody Manufacturing unit Zero (previously known as Detroit-Hamtramck); Spring Hill, Tennessee; Ramos Arizpe; and the CAMI plant in Canada.
In October, little or no additional info emerged from the third-quarter outcomes name:
Our battery module constraint is getting higher, which helped us greater than double Ultium Platform manufacturing within the third quarter in comparison with the second quarter. We at the moment are within the course of of putting in and testing our high-capacity module meeting strains, which can proceed into the primary a part of subsequent 12 months. We’re at the moment challenged with getting a few of the essential gear parts. We now have a devoted staff working with our suppliers to resolve all points to get these strains operating at price.
Throughout a November enterprise replace convention, Barra mentioned she was “disenchanted with our Ultium-based EV manufacturing in 2023.” She mentioned the corporate anticipated “considerably larger Ultium EV manufacturing” in 2024. When may that occur? “By mid-year [2024], we anticipate modules will not be a constraint, and we’ll concentrate on constructing to buyer demand fairly than setting new manufacturing targets,” she mentioned on the October name.
GM representatives recommend the worst is previous. Anderson mentioned Cadillac bought greater than 2,000 Cadillac Lyriqs in December and one other 1,900 in January—with the January quantity representing 19% of the model’s gross sales that month. For This autumn, Hummer gross sales ran at about 700 a month and Silverado EV gross sales at 450 a month.
Importantly, GM has put its Ultium automobiles into manufacturing in China with little problem. These automobiles use completely different battery cells than the North American variations, both of two nickel-manganese-cobalt cells (“skinny” and “thick”) or lithium-iron-phosphate “blade cells” from Chinese language powerhouse BYD. Anderson confirmed {that a} completely different firm proved the module-assembly gear for these batteries.
Since China has a majority (57%) of the world’s EV gross sales, with EVs making up greater than one-third of final 12 months’s new-vehicle gross sales, it seemingly now has increasingly more succesful integration distributors and extra skilled engineers and managers to supervise such {hardware}. As Anderson mentioned, “It is a main capability burst for the entire [North American] business, so everybody who makes this type of gear is saturated proper now.”
Requested what he may change if he received a do-over, Anderson mentioned, “I feel the place we received challenged, in addition to it being new tech, was after we determined to actually speed up the ramp. The mix of the 2 challenged even our expertise, proper?”
What We Would possibly Assume
GM’s issues getting Ultium launched could have been compounded by the departure of most of the firm’s most skilled battery engineers by retirements, buyouts, and even poaching by different companies. Anderson himself has been at GM 33 years, since his 1990 commencement from Purdue.
And whereas probably the most skilled battery engineers within the U.S. largely come from Silicon Valley—largely that means “Tesla”—GM has historically been immune to importing outdoors experience.
The October resignation of Gil Golan, only one month after the chief from Israeli battery startup Algolion was appointed GM’s CTO (GM had purchased the corporate in July), added to the turmoil. In a profile in The Electrical, he had expressed his want to herald senior battery consultants from outdoors the corporate. Administration could have believed that wasn’t wanted, that GM might darn properly do the job itself with its current workers. Distinction that to Ford CEO Jim Farley, who employed ex-Tesla govt Doug Discipline from his place overseeing the secretive Apple Automotive venture in September 2021 when he felt in-house EV engineers wanted extra experience and contemporary pondering.
Only recently, GM could also be reversing course there. Earlier this month it employed Kurt Kelty, a longtime former Tesla battery professional, to ramp up its long-term manufacturing equipment and produce its second-generation Ultium system into being with out the delays the primary has skilled. For a corporation well-known for its insular tradition, it’s an enormous transfer—and possibly an admission that it wants assist enjoying a brand new ball sport.
That is Not All, Of us
Its incapability to get the Ultium automobiles into manufacturing is much from GM’s solely drawback. It was additionally outsold in EVs in 2023 by a smaller rival, and its gross sales in China have plummeted. Journalists, analysts, and clients alike query its choice to remove Android Auto and Apple CarPlay from its future automobiles in favor of a GM-developed various pairing methodology.
First, GM was outsold final 12 months in EVs not simply by Tesla, but in addition by a considerably unlikely rival. That will be Hyundai-Kia, which stays the corporate to look at in EVs alongside Tesla and some aggressive Chinese language makers like BYD. A brand new Bloomberg NEF evaluation says Hyundai-Kia accounted for greater than 8% of the passenger EVs bought within the U.S. throughout 2023. Solely Tesla has a (a lot) larger proportion. The Korean firm’s less-expensive entries (Hyundai Kona EV, Kia Niro EV) neatly fill the area of interest GM deserted when it killed off the Bolt final 12 months.
Second, and worse for its long-term prospects, GM’s gross sales in China have plummeted to only half what they had been six years in the past. Buick and Cadillac proceed to promote extra items in China than in North America. However gross sales of quantity manufacturers constructed with joint-venture accomplice SAIC have fallen considerably because the market shifts towards homegrown Chinese language manufacturers—Geely, BYD, Nice Wall—whose EV fashions at the moment are absolutely aggressive with international entries, and which embody extra superior software program programs than Western makers can muster. GM’s response has been to maneuver its merchandise upmarket in China to be, in Barra’s phrases, “extra premium and high-end,” together with the Ultium-based Cadillac Celestiq beginning at $300,000. The outcomes of that pivot are but to be seen.
Lastly, GM shocked the business when it mentioned it could remove Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, commonplace gear in the present day on each new car bought. It claims its in-house various will present all the identical performance, however early opinions and checks recommend it could not but be absolutely baked. Comparable issues additionally produced a stop-sale on its new gas-powered 2024 Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon midsize pickup vehicles. Barra mentioned final week at a world auto-tech convention in New York that amongst her regrets from final 12 months was not bringing in GM’s new software program staff sooner.
Predictions Are Dangerous
Whereas GM continues to be a really worthwhile firm, its inventory worth stays on the identical stage (not accounting for inflation) as when Barra took the reins 10 years in the past this month. Any skilled reporter additionally is aware of it’s at all times harmful to depend out a significant automaker.
As of this month, Anderson mentioned GM was persevering with to construct its varied Ultium automobiles—even when the problematic Blazer EVs needed to be saved briefly till their software program might be up to date. “We’re not dropping the chance to make product,” he mentioned. “We’re not dropping the construct spot. If you happen to’re going to make [those] sorts of numbers, you’ll be able to’t take days off, you’ll be able to’t get time again, so we’re not dropping the time. You may’t take day without work after which say, ‘I’m gonna go twice as quick’.” As with the midsize pickups, as soon as the software program issues are recognized and glued, Ultium automobiles which were saved will undergo a cleansing and validation course of earlier than they’re despatched to dealerships.
A GM consultant advised InsideEVs it hopes to supply 200,000 to 300,000 Ultium-based automobiles for GM manufacturers this 12 months. Add to that 40,000 Honda Prologues—about as many Mustang Mach-Es had been bought final 12 months—and also you’re 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 or extra Ultium automobiles this 12 months—which might enhance EV market share at the very least 2% over final 12 months’s complete within the U.S.
In the meantime, GM additionally mentioned it could resume providing plug-in hybrid fashions in North America, which it hasn’t executed because it killed the Chevrolet Volt after a truncated 2019 mannequin 12 months. It nonetheless provides PHEV powertrains in different markets like China, although it hasn’t specified which U.S. fashions could turn into PHEVs as but. It stays to be seen whether or not these will serve solely as interim compliance automobiles to maintain GM on the suitable aspect of emission guidelines, or whether or not the corporate will really make substantial efforts to clarify how PHEVs work to a largely uncomprehending mass market.
GM’s first-quarter gross sales, due out in early April, will show or disprove the corporate’s confidence. And we’ll proceed to look at carefully to see when and which precise Ultium automobiles arrive in quantity at dealerships—and the way successfully GM’s “valued companions,” the independently operated third-party franchised sellers, select to promote them.
For GM’s sake, these Ultium automobiles had come quickly—and so they’d higher work correctly proper out of the field.
John Voelcker covers superior auto applied sciences and vitality coverage as a reporter and analyst, specializing in electrical automobiles and the vitality ecosystem round them. He edited Inexperienced Automotive Experiences for 9 years, and his work has appeared in Automotive and Driver, The Drive, Forbes Wheels, Wired, Standard Science and NPR’s “All Issues Thought-about.”