In a GM pilot, new EVs get cells from recycled batteries

Inside the battery assembly area at Factory ZERO, a team member fits modules into a new pack. The cells in those modules are made with recycled battery materials, and the vehicles they power are the first GM says it has built with such cells. General Motors reports that this month the first new Cadillac LYRIQ, LYRIQ-V, VISTIQ, ESCALADE IQ and IQL, Chevrolet Silverado EV Trail Boss and GMC Sierra EV AT4 rolled off the lines at Spring Hill Assembly and Factory ZERO, and are now heading to customers.

The chain behind them is long. GM says 80 end-of-life GM EV batteries were collected for a pilot and processed by its partner Cirba Solutions into black mass, a blend of battery materials obtained by disassembling and separating used lithium-ion batteries. Black mass is not yet a battery material. It has to be converted into cathode active material, the part of a cell that carries nickel, cobalt and manganese and helps set its cost, safety and performance. GM says the process produced more than 12 metric tons of new cathode material made with 100% recycled nickel, cobalt and manganese. Once tests showed that cells built with it performed as well as those made from virgin material, Ultium Cells produced the cells, and GM's plants assembled them into modules and packs.

The gains are real but bounded. GM says recycling can recover up to 95% of nickel, cobalt and manganese and up to 80% of lithium, depending on process conditions and battery chemistry, and that future advances may raise those figures. The company also stresses that the work took years of engineering, quality testing and coordination among partners including Cirba Solutions, Ultium Cells and LG Energy Solution. Its own conclusion is that the pilot gives a foundation of data and experience, and that the volume of batteries reaching end of life over the next decade will be far larger than what the pilot handled.

For GM, the immediate effect is a reusable source of the metals that drive cell cost, which the company links to lower-cost batteries over time, less reliance on newly extracted material and a more resilient supply chain. Those benefits depend on scaling beyond 80 batteries, and GM gives no date or volume for that step. For drivers and buyers, the change is invisible in the showroom: the vehicles are sold like any other, and the recycled content is in the cathode, not on the sticker.

Recycling is only one stage of GM's approach. The company says its remanufacturing and refurbishment programmes are designed to reuse more than 70% of pack components, and that batteries can first serve in stationary energy storage. Together with Redwood Materials, GM says it is deploying roughly 10,000 second-life batteries in energy infrastructure, including what it calls the largest second-life battery microgrid in North America, with more deployments planned, among them at its own U.S. manufacturing sites.