GM Charges Ahead and Opens Largest U.S. Automotive Battery Lab
By Bob Kruse
Executive Director, Global Vehicle Engineering for Hybrids, Electric Vehicles, and Batteries
With all of the focus last week on GM moving quickly as possible to become more of a customer-focused, leaner, cost-competitive company, it is good to get back to talking about the lifeblood… and the lifeline… of GM – our products and technology. Today, less than five months after announcing at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit our commitment to build the largest automotive battery lab in the U.S., we officially opened the facility on the grounds of Technical Center in Warren, Mich.
At 33,000 square feet, the Global Battery Systems lab is more than four times larger than our previous battery lab. To give you an idea of its size, it is equivalent to seven basketball courts. With the NBA finals going on, I thought the basketball comparison was appropriate.
It is equipped with 160 test channels available for individual battery tests and 64 cyclers, which are like treadmills for batteries. There also are 42 thermal chambers to simulate temperature extremes from Arizona to Alaska. The lab’s maximum power capacity is 6 megawatts or enough electricity to power about 1,400 homes, and approximately 90 percent of the electricity used for battery testing can be returned to the local energy grid for reuse on the GM Tech Center Campus.
Over half of the lab is dedicated to testing electrochemical battery cells and their enclosures, known as modules, a capability not available in GM’s current battery lab. The remaining floor space is used for testing completed battery packs, which are applied in our hybrid and electric vehicle technologies.
But the size, channels, chambers and power capacity are not necessarily what set this lab apart – it’s what we do and how we do it.
For example, we are able duplicate real-world driving patterns and compress a decade of battery calendar life into 24 months of simulations. The lab also contains a thermal shaker table for structural integrity testing, and a battery tear down area for competitor benchmarking.
The Global Battery Systems Lab complements our other battery labs in Mainz-Kastel, Germany and Honeoye Falls, NY, the Warren Technical Center’s Research Chemical Engineering facility and the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor where we recently opened a Battery Lab (the Advanced Battery Coalition for drive trains or ABCD for short), providing us with global battery development capability. We are able to obtain real-time lab visuals and reports for each location around the clock, seven days a week. In fact, when our new lab is 100 percent utilized, it will produce more than 45 gigabytes of data- that’s more than 10 full-length DVD movies per day.
We’ve made the decision to bring battery development in-house because we believe that will be a key competitive advantage. GM has more than 25 years of battery and electric vehicle knowledge. And we have more than 1,000 engineers currently working on advanced batteries and electrically driven vehicles.
With this new lab, we’re putting our know-how and experience to work and taking it to another level by also working on our generation two and generation three battery systems well before we launch the generation one system in the Volt.
Since we announced chapter 11, a lot of people have asked me what they’re getting for their money and investment in GM, and I simply tell them: the future of the automobile. This new battery lab is the nerve center for our entire global battery development activities and is a big step forward in our efforts to electrify the vehicle.
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Mr. Kruse,
What kind of tests does your lab do to ensure the battery case will remain intact and not break open scattering its contents during a high-speed crash?
“To give you an idea of its size, it is equivalent to seven basketball courts. With the NBA finals going on, I thought the basketball comparison was appropriate.”
Appropriate? Not really. Basketball is a winter game. Using tennis courts (After all, this was the weekend of the French Open), Olympic-size swimming pools, or baseball stadiums would have been more appropriate. Although you needn’t be patronizing at all. Most of us know very well what 33,000 square feet is: It’s a square approximately 181 feet on a side, which come to think of it, is only four times as big as the area inside the bases of a baseball diamond.
Will the entire Battery be built in the US? If not then talk to the hand…………..
Is there a driving condition that the charging capacity of the combustion engine cannot keep up with the battery power demand of the electric engine? I hope the answer is negative. Otherwise, the car will stall and will require some stop time before the battery is sufficiently recharged.
Steve,
If the US government had backed battery development like the governments of Japan and Korea then the US might have had some chance (and US industry) might have had some chance of being a leader in battery technology. As it is; the core of battery technology innovation is in the far east, not in the US as is the vast majority of manufacturing. That being said; GM’s battery for the Volt will be built in the US.
Buck, with NBA finals still going on basketball can hardly be called a winter sport.
Since, I assume, the contents of Li-Ion batteries are either solid or gel-like the dangers in a crash of spilled contents are different from lead-acid traditional batteries. But other dangers do lurk. How hot will these get while being recharged – in varying ambient temperature and humidity environments? Is a quick-charge in Phoenix on a 110 degree day significantly more a fire hazard than same in Pittsburgh when it’s below freezing? Laptop computers get uncomfortably warm when being charged while in use, now multiply this 1000-fold. And that brings up another question, can the batteries receive as full a charge in winter conditions? We know that the electrical drain is higher when electrons flow more slowly.
I still want to see a pure gen-set hybrid, using small engine all the time to run onboard generator, with only enough battery pack to handle acceleration draws. Basically the current Volt but with maybe 1/10 to 1/4 the amount of batteries – hence smaller, lighter, even more fuel efficient in long run.
>> with NBA finals still going on basketball can hardly be called a winter sport. <<
Chief,
Football ~ autumn sport
Basketball ~ winter sport
Hockey ~ winter sport
Baseball ~ spring/summer sport
The fact that the NBA and NHL let greed overcome tradition and drag their playoffs into June doesn’t change that.
Hey Chief Pontiac — isn’t the answer to all those questions exactly why you would open a high tech battery research center like the one described in the post…? C’mon…you have to give them some credit…
John, don’t read me wrong. I applaud the Volt, the battery lab, and all that. Even the next two generations of this drivetrain that are already under development. I just don’t want GM to put all their alternative propulsion vehicle development in only one basket as the introductory version Volt may not be the solution for all people in all places – look at the last generation Honda Insight as an example – I have a friend who owns one but cannot drive it in our Great Lakes winters – not primarily because of battery issues or lack of mass- but because nobody makes snow tires in it’s oddball size.
I picture an additional hybrid or two somewhere between current Malibu/Aura and the Volt, something with way less engine than Malibu and way less battery than Volt. For my type of driving, which can be less than 40 miles at a time but not on a daily basis I can be comfortable with not plugging in every night if it can shave maybe 1/4 ton off of GVW, then that could translate into that much GCW (cargo weight – as in did I mention there ought to be a small pickup version of this?)
Buck,
Last time I checked, I only play basketball in the summer. It’s tough to play with a snow suit on and snow covered courts here in Michigan. Just because the NBA plays indoors, does not mean basketball is a winter sport. Pathetic that you even brought that up. Is that because there’s nothing you can really say bad about this story, so you have to make up a lame excuse to try to put GM down?
Back on topic, I think this is a great move by GM. Hopefully it will bring more high-tech jobs to the area.
>> Is that because there’s nothing you can really say bad about this story, so you have to make up a lame excuse to try to put GM down? <<
Nope, my problem is really with the NBA and NHL for getting greedy and adding so many games they had to drag their playoffs into June instead of having them in March as God intended. Bob Kruse’s remarks just gave me a chance to vent, although it was unnecessary for him to translate the square footage of the battery lab into b-ball courts. We are all smart people — just telling us how many square feet would have been sufficient.
I do agree the battery lab is a progressive step for GM and deserves praise.
Enjoy your outdoor basketball this summer. (I did play basketball outdoors in the winter growing up in Northern Illinois. If you keep moving, you don’t really need a snowsuit – sweat pants and sweat shirt will do, and using a shovel to clear the court–or driveway in my case–does help.)
What do you plan to do about Chevron’s NiMH patent? Seems to me like that is currently blocking most large-scale uses of cheap NiMH cells.
By the way, please ditch the Howie Long commercials. Belittling someone’s manhood does not sell cars; it just makes GM look stupid and insults America’s intelligence.
Howie Long/Chevy: “You are not a man. Your truck has a baby step.”
Toyota guy: “Your company is in Chapter 11. Go back to football, or your awesome acting career”