GM Bets $900 Million on Battery Center to Out-Chemistry China

General Motors has sunk $900 million into a Battery Cell Development Center in Warren, Mich., betting it can beat China's grip on cheap EV batteries with a homegrown chemistry called LMR. Kurt Kelty, GM's vice president of battery and sustainability, told Fortune the company has worked on lithium manganese-rich cells for more than a decade. "We're not licensing this from China," Kelty said. "We're developing this here."

The stakes are concrete. GM took about $7.6 billion in EV-related charges last year — a fraction of Ford's $19.5 billion and Stellantis' $26.5 billion — after the federal EV tax credit expired at the end of September 2025. GM says the charges aren't comparable because it's sticking with EVs as its end-game scenario. Its 2025 results: $185 billion in revenue, $2.7 billion in net income, 2.85 million cars sold domestically, a 17.2% market share.

What makes LMR different?

Most of the world's cheap battery supply runs on lithium iron phosphate, a chemistry China dominates. GM's LMR cells swap out much of the nickel and cobalt for cheaper manganese and extra lithium, and run about 30% to 40% nickel versus roughly 85% in today's high-nickel cells, said longtime GM battery engineer Andy Oury. GM claims LMR delivers roughly a third more energy density than leading LFP cells at comparable cost. Oury and battery cell development director Anselmo "Mo" Gallegos are scrambling to start commercial production with LG Energy Solution in 2028.

Before the BCDC existed, GM couldn't build cells at all. Engineers drew a design, took it to Samsung or LG and asked, in Oury's words, "pretty please, will you put this together?" Now Gallegos' team is ramping up to a couple thousand full-size cells a day. He describes the final charging process with a food metaphor: "a recipe to get the perfect donut at the end of it."

Why does the CFO want 'red lights'?

The LMR decision itself was a culture test. Kelty said the team had data covering 60% to 70% of the decision. "What we had to do was make that last leap and say, 'You know what? We're going to get the next 30% or 40% of the data and make it there.'" Oury recalled the internal hurdle as "more momentum-based or emotion-based rather than data and business-based."

Since joining in February 2024, Kelty has run quarterly reviews where goals get marked red, yellow or green. "At the end of the quarter, when we look at it, there should be some red lights on there," he said. "And if there isn't, then to me that means that they didn't stretch far enough. So I want to see red." He put it bluntly on prioritization: "If you don't have a list of things you're not going to do this quarter, then I assume you have too many people."

CFO Paul Jacobson, who has generated about $10 billion in annual cash since 2021 versus a $3 billion average in the prior five years, funds the experimentation. "What we really want to do is create a continuous stream of healthy cash flows," he said.

Who else is driving the change?

Sterling Anderson, the former Tesla Autopilot chief hired as chief product officer in May 2025, is pushing a "no sacred cows" mentality. "Engineers thrive when you take the constraints off the problem," he said. His product org hands out a "Big Swings" award for "effort that swings through the fences, whether successful or not." A four-person team built a voice-controlled prototype in a Cadillac Lyriq about 30 days after he issued the challenge.

GM has also adopted a script for dissent, begun about a year and a half ago: "I want to grant myself permission to speak fearlessly." Kelty said an engineer recently used it on him directly, telling him "What you said is absolutely wrong." His response: "It's great to have that."

Jason Fischer, a 28-year veteran leading the AI push in engineering, calls himself "a B-plus student" and credits simulation with cutting months of physical testing. "AI actually enables engineers to have some time back to do what we should be paying them to do, and that's innovate," he said.

Can GM move as fast as China?

GM folded Cruise into its own teams in 2024, buying out outside investors, and kept the autonomy engineers, code and methodologies for a next-generation Super Cruise launching in 2028. Fischer said GM is moving toward a two-year vehicle development cycle with weekly "tall pole" reviews. His verdict: "I'm convinced that we're going to be able to do things just as fast as China."

The 2028 LMR production start with LG Energy Solution will be the first hard test of whether that conviction survives contact with the factory floor.