GM selling its stake in Michigan battery factory to LG

General Motors and LG Energy Solution dropped two noteworthy pieces of news Monday.

In separate announcements, GM said it planned to sell its stake in a Michigan joint-venture battery factory to LG, while the companies also agreed to a continued technical partnership for development of prismatic cells.

Pending closure of the transaction, which is expected in the first quarter of 2025, GM said it anticipates recouping its investment in the Lansing, Michigan, plant, which the automaker said is nearly complete but is awaiting installation of equipment. The plant was said to cost $2.5 billion when first reported in 2022, with GM and LG splitting that amount.

GM said the transaction would not change its ownership interest in the Ultium Cells LLC joint venture with LG that the plant is a part of. And so far there are no plans to change the ownership status of Ultium Cells plants in Warren, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tennessee, according to the automaker.

In what is considered a separate matter from GM's divestment in the Michigan battery plant, the two companies will also extend an existing technical partnership to include prismatic cells for future GM electric vehicles.

General Motors and LG Energy Solution partner on prismatic battery cells

GM has for the moment standardized its EV hardware around pouch cells, which are currently being manufactured at the existing Ultium Cells LLC plants in Ohio and Tennessee. But the automaker said it aims to "diversify its supply chain, leveraging multiple chemistries and form factors."

This is something GM has been investigating for awhile. In 2023, CEO Mary Barra noted that GM was flexible on battery-cell format and said the automaker was looking into both prismatic cells and cylindrical cells, albeit with no definitive plans to use either.

The automaker is now saying that prismatic cells could provide packaging advantages, as well as simplified manufacturing by reducing the number of modules in a battery pack. And LG already has experience with prismatic cells, GM noted.

Some retrenchment was likely after initial struggles with GM's EV ramp-up. The automaker earlier this year backed away from a previous target of having production capacity for one million EVs by 2025, with Barra saying the market wasn't developing as anticipated. GM's own EV production issues might have contributed to that as well, although increased EV deliveries beginning in Q2 indicated the automaker was turning a corner.

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