GM’s Recycled Battery Materials Reach Production EVs

GM says new battery cells containing recovered metals meet its performance standards, bringing battery recycling into customer vehicles.

• GM has built production EVs with cathode material containing 100% recycled nickel, cobalt and manganese.
• The company says the cells performed as well as those made with newly extracted materials.
• Lower battery costs are a longer-term goal, but GM has not announced related savings.

General Motors has moved recycled battery materials into vehicles destined for customers. Through a pilot program, the automaker has produced new battery cells using metals recovered from retired GM EV battery packs, with no performance compromise reported in its validation work.

The milestone addresses a practical question for buyers: can recovered materials meet the same requirements as newly mined resources? According to Kurt Kelty, GM’s vice-president of battery and sustainability, the resulting cells met the company’s quality, safety and performance standards and performed as well as cells made with virgin materials.

New Cells Made With Recovered Metals

Kelty said Ultium Cells manufactured the battery cells using cathode active material containing entirely recycled nickel, cobalt and manganese. Vehicles incorporating those cells have left GM’s Spring Hill and Factory ZERO assembly plants and are heading to customers.

That distinction is interesting. These are newly manufactured cells containing recovered materials, rather than used battery packs installed in new vehicles. The 100% recycled claim applies specifically to the nickel, cobalt and manganese in the cathode material, not to every component of the battery.

According to InsideEVs, GM worked with Cirba Solutions to process 80 end-of-life battery packs. The project yielded 12 metric tonnes of cathode active material after the recovered material underwent further processing.

The participating models were the Cadillac Lyriq, Vistiq, Escalade IQ, Escalade IQL, Chevrolet Silverado EV Trail Boss and GMC Sierra EV AT4. The pilot does not establish that every example of those models contains recycled material.

A Potential Route to Lower Costs

Recovering valuable metals could reduce demand for newly extracted resources as recycling expands. However, the pilot does not establish how much production costs could fall, or when any savings might reach buyers. Neither a vehicle price reduction nor a quantified or planed emissions improvement was included in announcement.

For now, the significant development is the use of recovered metals in production vehicles after meeting GM’s validation requirements. Expanding that process beyond a pilot will determine how much it can contribute to the company’s battery supply.

Source: InsideEVs