Shift Magazine - November 25, 2019 - 14

Workers at GM's Global
Battery Systems Lab set
up a chiller test, left, and
a shaker table test.

A PEEK INSIDE
How General Motors puts batteries through their paces
BY DALE BUSS

eneral Motors' Global Battery
Systems Lab is an outwardly
nondescript precinct within the
company's square-mile technical center in Warren, Mich., tucked into
the Estes Engineering Center. But the
lab is squarely on the front lines of GM's
electric-car revolution.
Even after entering the Walmart-size
facility, which has been expanded several times to 100,000 square feet over
a decade of existence, its purpose isn't
immediately apparent. A casual observer
might think the rows of huge metal
boxes could be baking Twinkies or mixing
pharmaceuticals.
Instead, inside these stout cabinets,
extreme energies are clashing, and atomic-level violence is escalating as GM tests
the capabilities and safety of battery cells
and packs for its all-electric vehicles and
hybrids, and those of its competitors.
The lab has three new 600 kilowatt
battery cyclers, for instance, and soon
14

shift * november 2019

will have 16 more - at a cost of more
than a half-million dollars each, including infrastructure - to conduct tests on
batteries. With the rest of the lab battery
cyclers, they will use more juice at times
than it takes to power all the households
in Warren, a Detroit suburb of more than
135,000 people.
"We're trying to wear out the batteries, which are going to have to take hammering on the accelerator, or maybe hauling a load up Pikes Peak," said Douglas
Drauch, the lab's lead engineer.
Other cabinets are environmental
chambers that mimic climate and weather
extremes. "We can set things up for deserts, rain forests or Nome, Alaska," Drauch
said. "We can set temperatures for as low
as minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which
you actually find only in some town in
Siberia."
And in one room, a giant, $2 million
"shaker" simulates how rough-and-tumble journeys on various surfaces will

affect battery systems over time. An
$8.5-million shaker soon will be installed,
meant to handle the larger battery packs
in future EVs.
GM says it has the largest battery-testing lab of any automaker globally. Nearly
all such testing now can be done under
this single roof, reducing cost and development time.

DURABILITY AND SAFETY

The lab's crucial overall goal is to ensure
not only performance but also durability and safety of GM's battery systems,
because the company is promising that
its battery systems will last for the life of
its new EVs and hybrids.
The automaker says it invested $28
million in the lab last year for new test
chambers and advanced equipment to
"help us accelerate our next-generation
battery architecture."
The lab takes the results of mathematical simulations and compares them with

Shift Magazine - November 25, 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shift Magazine - November 25, 2019