GM to Develop Its Own Sodium-Ion Cell for Grid Storage, Taking a Stake in Peak Energy and Keeping Exclusive Manufacturing Rights
General Motors will design a sodium-ion cell at its Warren, Michigan battery labs and retain exclusive rights to manufacture it, while GM Ventures takes a strategic stake in partner Peak Energy.
Overview
General Motors is moving its battery ambitions beyond electric vehicles and into the power grid. The automaker announced a partnership with the startup Peak Energy to develop sodium-ion technology for grid-scale storage and is targeting first production of prototypes this year, according to Energy-Storage.News. Under the arrangement, GM will develop the sodium-ion cell in its Michigan battery labs and retain exclusive manufacturing rights, while Peak will incorporate the cell into its proprietary energy storage systems, the companies said in their joint announcement carried by PR Newswire. The collaboration is backed by a strategic investment from GM Ventures in Peak Energy, the same announcement stated, though no dollar figure was disclosed.
The announcement was made at GM’s “Empower” event, as reported by CleanTechnica.
What We Know
The work is centered in Warren, Michigan, where GM has a centralized battery R&D operation, and prototyping is scheduled to begin this year at the Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center, according to CleanTechnica. Energy-Storage.News reports that GM will retain exclusive manufacturing rights to the cell, with the work centered at the Warren facility and prototypes targeted for this year.
The pitch for sodium-ion over the lithium chemistries that dominate today’s grid batteries rests largely on materials and thermal behavior. Sodium is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, CleanTechnica notes. Peak’s design uses a passively cooled battery storage system that eliminates the energy-intensive cooling that incumbent lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) systems require, per the joint press release.
Peak says the approach pays off in cost and reliability. Its sodium-ion system reduces energy storage costs by 20% compared to conventional systems and delivers more than 99% uptime, the company stated in the announcement. The release also claims the United States could reduce battery storage’s annual energy waste by up to 2 TWh/year with the technology.
“Peak is already demonstrating the value of sodium-ion through their innovative energy storage platform,” said Kurt Kelty, VP of Battery and Sustainability at General Motors, in the joint release. “Lowering the cost of energy is one of the most important issues facing America today,” said Landon Mossburg, CEO and Co-Founder of Peak Energy, in the same release.
Peak Energy is not starting from zero. The company has already signed multi-year supply agreements with US storage developers, including a 720MWh initial agreement with Jupiter Power that could extend to 4GWh and a 1.5GWh agreement with Energy Vault, Energy-Storage.News reports. It has also deployed a 3.1MWh system at an R&D lab in Wisconsin with RWE’s US arm — the pilot The Machine Herald previously reported as the first sodium-ion deployment on the MISO grid.
The sodium-ion partnership is one piece of a broader GM push into stationary storage. The automaker is moving quickly to produce LFP batteries for commercial energy storage applications through its Ultium Cells joint venture with LG Energy Solution, and, working with Redwood Materials, is deploying roughly 10,000 second-life battery packs into energy infrastructure, including power systems for Crusoe’s AI data center in Sparks, Nevada, CleanTechnica reports.
What We Don’t Know
GM and Peak Energy did not disclose the size of the GM Ventures investment. The publicly stated milestone is only prototype production at the Warren facility this year, per Energy-Storage.News; the companies have not announced a timeline for commercial-scale manufacturing, production volumes, the cell’s energy density, or how the GM-built cell will compare against the sodium-ion products already shipping from Chinese manufacturers.
Analysis
The move makes GM the latest US automaker to repurpose EV battery expertise for the grid. Ford launched its own stationary-storage unit earlier this year, which The Machine Herald covered when the company unveiled an LFP-based system targeting US battery storage. GM’s bet differs in chemistry: rather than buying or building LFP packs alone, it is taking on the development of a sodium-ion cell itself and locking up exclusive manufacturing rights, positioning the automaker as a domestic cell supplier for a chemistry whose volume production has so far been concentrated overseas. Whether GM can translate prototype cells into competitive, large-scale grid product — and on what timeline — is the open question the announcement leaves unanswered.