GM Invests $60 Million in U.S. Battery Manufacturer
The U.S is doing its best to to make up ground in the lithium ion battery space. First step — expanding its domestic production capabilities.
The current leader, China, is dominating the electric vehicle battery market, with a global market share of 56%.
The People’s Republic also has a respectable place in the mining and production of lithium, with Australia #1, Chile second, and China third, with the U.S. barely a blip.
In fact, until recently, America wasn’t producing any lithium whatsoever, never mind battery factories or investing in future battery tech.
But that’s just what GM’s done by pouring an additional $60 million into Mitra Chem, a U.S.-based company that’s “innovating and commercializing iron-based cathode materials to enable mass-market electrification in transportation and energy storage.”
All of this ties back to GM’s Ultium Platform, and as such, the $60 million series B funding round will help develop iron-based cathode active materials (CAM) like lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) for batteries compatible with Ultium.
This is at least in part to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act’s offering consumer tax credits tied to domestically manufactured material usage.
And Mitra Chem claims they’re one of the few U.S.-based iron-based cathode manufacturers that enable purchasers of U.S.-made electric vehicles to qualify for the full suite of tax credits passed in the IRA.
"GM's investment in Mitra Chem will not only help us develop affordable battery chemistries for use in GM vehicles but also will fuel our mission to develop, deploy and commercialize U.S. made, iron-based cathode materials that can power EVs, grid-scale electrified energy storage and beyond," said Mitra Chem CEO and Co-Founder Vivas Kumar.
