GM ditching 'Ultium' name for batteries, tech amid EV changes

DETROIT — General Motors will drop the name “Ultium” for its electric vehicle batteries and supporting technologies after spending years promoting the brand as it rethinks its EV and battery operations.

The Detroit automaker confirmed the switch Tuesday ahead of an investor event in which GM is expected to discuss the change.

It also is expected to use the event to tout the company’s flexibility to produce both traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines and EVs. Its commitment to EVs comes amid slower-than-expected adoption of electric vehicles.

The change comes after GM spent billions of dollars to develop in-house “Ultium” batteries and technologies that the automaker previously touted as “revolutionary” and the ultimate technologies to be able to build a profitable EV business.

The company said the batteries and the technologies will remain, but the name “Ultium” will not, other than production operations such as its “Ultium Cells” joint venture plants with LG Energy Solution.

“As GM continues to expand its EV business, the company is no longer branding its electric vehicle architecture, battery and cells, or EV components with the Ultium name, starting in North America,” the company said in a statement.

GM has been rethinking its EV battery strategy amid changing market conditions and an influx of new, outside executives, including Tesla veterans JP Clausen, who now leads GM manufacturing, and Kurt Kelty, GM’s vice president of battery.

GM’s EV sales are growing, but not at the pace the company wanted. The automaker reported a roughly 60% year-over-year increase in EVs during the third quarter, to roughly 32,100 units sold. Still, EVs made up only 4.9% of the company’s total third-quarter sales.

CEO Mary Barra said Tuesday the automaker is on pace to produce and wholesale about 200,000 EVs for North America this year, achieving profitability on a production, or contribution-margin basis, by the end of this year. The previous guidance was for a target of 200,00 to 250,000 EVs, which had been lowered from as high as 300,000 units.

GM has already started moving away from its original Ultium pouch cells, produced with LG with nickel manganese cobalt, to other battery types and chemistries.

GM earlier this year announced a more than $3 billion deal to manufacture hard-can batteries, known as prismatic cells, with South Korea’s Samsung SDI, a rival of LG.

“We’re moving from a single-source, single-form factor, single-chemistry to a multi-chemistry, multi-form factor, multi-supplier strategy,” Kelty told The Information in a report published Monday. “What we’re going to do going forward is really optimize for each vehicle.”

The automaker is turning to that optimization strategy after spending millions of dollars in marketing and advertising, including back-to-back years of star-studded Super Bowl ads in 2021 and 2022 for Ultium in vehicles that weren’t available yet for customers to purchase.

GM is rethinking other areas as well. Rory Harvey, GM president of global markets, including North America, in September confirmed to CNBC that the company was completely rethinking its plans for a second all-electric vehicle plant in Orion Township, Michigan — from production down through the entire supply chain.

“We always get lessons. We always get learning,” he said in September. “The reason that we’re doing what we’re doing with Orion is the fact that, you know, if you looked at the original gradient of EV adoption, there’s no doubt that, both in the industry and from ours, it was slightly more aggressive than it is.”

“This gives us the ability to do a stop breath and refocus and say what is appropriate for the customer demands that are out there today?” he said.

GM currently has one plant in the U.S. that exclusively produces EVs, called Factory Zero in Detroit. The Orion plant was expected to be the second by the end of 2024 before the company delayed those plans by at least a year.