Month: May 2023

General Motors appears to be moving forward with a plan to build an electric vehicle battery plant in northern Indiana.

The automaker has proposed spending $3.5 billion on what would be its fourth U.S. battery plant, according to government officials. The project outside New Carlisle, Ind., would have roughly 1,600 full-time employees by the end of 2027, at an average wage of $24 per hour, according to a development agreement filed with St. Joseph County.

County officials on Tuesday approved a development agreement and tax abatement with GM for the project. It amends an earlier agreement approved last year between the county and Ultium Cells LLC, the name of GM’s joint venture with LG Energy Solution. Talks with LG broke down over a fourth battery plant that would follow three in operation or under construction in the U.S.

GM in April formed a joint venture with South Korean battery manufacturer Samsung SDI and said the two companies planned to invest more than $3 billion to open a plant by 2026.

A GM spokesperson said the automaker has not yet decided on a location.

“Samsung SDI and General Motors are developing a competitive business case for a battery cell manufacturing plant that could be located in New Carlisle, Ind.,” GM said in a statement. “As part of that work, we submitted a tax abatement application with St. Joseph County, which was approved [Tuesday]. We appreciate the local support as the joint venture works to make a location decision.”

GM and Samsung said their plant will produce prismatic and cylindrical battery cells, which will give GM additional form factors for its upcoming EVs. The automaker said it expects to have roughly 160 gigawatt-hours of battery cell capacity in the U.S. when the plant reaches full production.

Construction of the Indiana facility — two buildings totaling 3 million square feet — would begin in the fourth quarter and finish by the end of 2027, according to the development agreement.

St. Joseph County offered to eliminate GM’s real property taxes for 10 years and personal property taxes for 15 years, though the company would pay $4.5 million annually for a decade toward infrastructure costs, according to the county.

GM has invested more than $7 billion in three Ultium Cells battery plants. The first, in Warren, Ohio, has begun production. A second plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., is expected to open this year, while a third near Lansing, Mich., is expected to open in 2024.

BMW will roll out at least four variants of the all-electric i5 midsize sedan as it expands drivetrains as part of a redesign of the eighth-generation 5 Series family.

The i5, which will compete against luxury battery-electric cars including the Mercedes EQE, was unveiled Wednesday along with a combustion engine sibling, the 2024 5 Series sedan.

The retooled sedan is 3.4 inches longer, 1.3 inches wider and 1.4 inches taller than the outgoing model, with a wheelbase increased by 0.8 inches to 117.9 inches, helping to improve seating comfort, notably in the rear, BMW said.   

The battery-electric i5 variants will be:

• The i5 M60 xDrive sedan, which will become the flagship 5 Series model with 590 hp and a 0-to-60 mph acceleration time of 3.7 seconds and 256 miles of range.
• The entry i5 eDrive40 rear-wheel-drive sedan, with 335 hp and 295 miles of range.
• An i5 station wagon to be sold in Europe.
• An all-wheel-drive i5 sedan model that will launch in 2024.

The retooled 5 Series and new i5 sedan, assembled in Dingolfing, Germany, will go on sale globally in October, BMW said.

The 5 series, dating to 1972, is a core model in BMW’s U.S. car lineup. It was the No. 2 seller, after the Lexus ES, among luxury midsize cars in 2022, with sales of 20,859, down 15 percent.

The 2024 i5 has an 84.3-kilowatt-hour battery pack and a driving range of 296 to 361 miles under Europe’s WLTP testing regime.

The charging unit in the i5 enables Level 2 AC charging up to 11 kW. When connected to a DC fast charger, the charging rate of 205 kW allows the i5 battery to be topped off to 80 percent from 10 percent in about 30 minutes. BMW said first-time owners of the i5 will receive two years of complimentary 30-minute charging sessions at Electrify America DC fast-charging locations.

The i5’s range can be also moderated by activating a new drive system function, what BMW is calling Max Range, to help alleviate range anxiety. When the car is in Max Range mode, drive power and top speed are restricted and comfort functions are adjusted to conserve battery power.

The spokesperson also declined to provide pricing for Night Series vehicles, noting that the cost will differ depending on the market and the customer’s choices for personalization. By comparison, Black Badge Rolls-Royces command a premium of roughly $45,000 over standard models, according to the company.

In an emailed statement, Gorden Wagener, the chief design officer of Mercedes-Benz, characterized the options as offering “a playful sense of rebellion” compared to what you might typically see in a brand such as Maybach, which had been seen by some as becoming bland.

Mercedes has introduced various Maybach models off and on since the Maybach 52 and Maybach 62 in 2002, but the automaker worked hardest in recent years to permanently rejuvenate the 114-year-old marque.

In 2022, Mercedes-Maybach introduced the two-tone, 18-foot (5,486mm) long S680 sedan developed by Virgil Abloh, the late head of menswear for Louis Vuitton, to much fanfare and critical acclaim.

A Mercedes-Maybach “Haute Voiture” (a play on “haute couture”) sports bouclé door panels that look like they could have come out of the Chanel atelier. The vehicle has recently started production, and all 150 units are spoken for.

The 600 will be the first Fiat model on a Stellantis platform after the merger of PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler that formed the group in 2021. 

The 600 is expected to go on sale by year-end, with a potential unveiling on July 4, according to reports in the Italian news media.

A Stellantis representative declined to comment.

Fiat has used the 600 name for two series of small cars, dating back to the rear-engine replacement for the Topolino in 1955. That version of the 600 was in production until the late 1960s, with variants that included the Multipla ultra-mini van. A second generation was launched in the late 1990s as the Seicento (Italian for 600) minicar and later renamed the 600.

The Fiat 600 will be assembled in Poland at the former FCA Tychy plant, alongside the Jeep Avenger, which was unveiled last October and for which deliveries started in April in Italy.

The e-CMP platform supports gasoline, diesel and full-electric powertrains. The Jeep Avenger is only sold as a battery electric car in most European markets, with a 1.2-liter three-cylinder gasoline engine offered only in Italy, Poland and Spain. The Fiat 600 is expected to  follow the same pattern.

A small Alfa Romeo crossover on the same platform will also be unveiled by the end of 2023 and be on sale in 2024. It will also be assembled in Tychy.

The 600 is the first entirely new model unveiled by the Italian brand since the New 500 full-electric small car in 2020. Stellantis said at an analyst conference in February that two Fiat EVs will be launched in the second half of 2023, with a second potentially being a Fiat version of the Citroen Ami quadricycle. Opel already sells a derivative of the quadricycle called the Rocks Electric. The Fiat variant could revive the Topolino name, dealer sources told Automotive News Europe last year.

With few new products in the past decade, Fiat’s European market share has been declining sharply. First-quarter sales were up 7.5 percent to 103,312, according to industry group ACEA. However, the market as a whole grew by 18 percent, and Fiat’s share fell to 3.2 percent from 3.5 percent in the same period in 2022.

Our Next Energy’s value proposition for those batteries — and for the cells and packs it intends to produce at its own plant — is energy density. Specifically, the company wants to pack the most range into batteries with limited cobalt and nickel, which are in finite supply and often come from sources with poor human rights records.

ONE’s Aries batteries boast 287 Wh/L and about 300 miles of range, compared with the Tesla Model 3’s 232 Wh/L. ONE’s goal is to eventually commercialize its Gemini battery, a dual chemistry architecture capable of more than 600 miles of range, Ijaz said.

ONE also sets itself apart as a U.S.-based battery maker in an industry dominated by Asia, said Glenn Stevens, executive director of MICHauto and vice president of mobility initiatives for the Detroit Regional Chamber.

“Our dependence on really three countries — China, Korea and Japan — is really not sustainable for our own supply chain and our own companies that want to design, engineer and manufacture vehicles for the future,” Stevens said. “So ONE plays a really key role in developing a domestic supply chain with U.S. innovation.”