A New Battery Breakthrough That Could Save Electric Vehicles During a Recession
By: Steve Levine
Tags: Cars, Oil, Business, Economy, Energy

NMC is the most widely used type of automotive lithium-ion battery, short for its composition of nickel, manganese, and cobalt. GM was the first to commercialize NMC, a twist on the original lithium-ion battery, invented in 1980. In 2011, an NMC-equipped battery powered GM’s new plug-in hybrid Volt. From there NMC spread, and it now powers the electric vehicles of every major carmaker on the planet except Tesla, which favors a different formulation called NCA.

But what researchers on both NMC and NCA have encountered as they have sought to reduce cobalt is an electrochemical rebellion: Cobalt has served as a balancing agent, and when it’s been reduced, the other metals have revolted and refused to cooperate with the objective of storing energy. The result: The cathode cracks after just a few charge-and-recharge cycles.

A couple of years ago, though, researchers successfully managed a substantial reduction — lowering cobalt to 20% of the cathode. Researchers regarded it as a signal triumph; as recently as a few months ago they were saying that further reduction was highly improbable.

But on March 4, GM suddenly announced a much-enhanced line of electric vehicles and a new battery pack for a future Cadillac, a self-driving Cruise Origin, and next year’s Hummer. What the company did not say, and that no one noticed apart from a couple of trade journals, was that the newly unveiled battery achieved the latest cobalt-reduction goal — the cathode was just 10% cobalt.

It turns out that while researchers at universities and national labs had continued to labor away, LG had already reached what the battery field calls “811,” short for NMC containing 80% nickel, 10% manganese, and 10% cobalt. LG had surprisingly avoided the usual cracking. When you add up the entire cobalt reduction you also knock up to about $2,400 off the price of a car, says Carnegie Mellon’s Viswanathan. In part, the solution was doping the cathode with alumina (along with other trade secrets), according to Grewe, the GM battery official.

A notable aspect of the advance is its origin — researchers working at the bench. For years, researchers attempting various breakthrough efforts in lithium-ion and futuristic battery types like lithium oxygen have faced nothing but frustration. It reached the point where one wondered whether the physics of batteries are simply too hard. In that vein, NMC 811 is a sign of hope for battery science. Now, says Grewe, the LG and GM teams are working to reduce the cobalt even further.

For the last decade, though, all but unnoticed to the broader public, GM has gone after electrics in a very serious way.

GM is perhaps the most surprising presence at the forefront of the electric car race. Over the years, the company has produced some of history’s most iconic vehicles — among them, the 1957 Chevy, the 1959 Cadillac DeVille, the 1963 Corvette, and the 1969 Camaro. As a company, General Motors was the very archetype of American capitalism at its admired peak, year after year turning out models that were snapped up by Americans and status-seeking buyers across the globe.

But the 1980s killed that winning image. GM went flabby with the rest of Detroit, producing grandmotherly mediocrities with mixed quality, opening a yawning space for Japanese automakers to capture the market for high-quality, desirable, mainstream vehicles.

For the last decade, though, all but unnoticed to the broader public, GM has gone after electrics in a very serious way. The groundbreaking 2011 Volt, which traveled 35 miles on a fully charged battery before the engine took over, was named car of the year by Motor Trend magazine. In 2017, the company won the same prize for the Bolt, an all-electric, $37,500 sedan that went an at-the-time astonishing 238 miles on a charge, beating the Tesla Model 3 to market by several months. Both the Volt and Bolt were deliciously decked out vehicles ­ — lacking the elegant sexuality of a Tesla, but reliably handsome, durable, and stacked with technology.

Now GM’s hat trick is reimagining the cultish classic Hummer, a gas-guzzler, as an electric. With the Volt and the Bolt, GM fell flat on sales, and one of the reasons was incompetent promotion — the company failed to market the cars, leaving the field to Elon Musk, who today is as synonymous with electric cars as Steve Jobs was with the smartphone.

This time, GM is not only boasting that it is first, but intends to license its battery to rivals.