General Motors has announced that its GM Defense subsidiary will provide GM Ultium battery technology in support of the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Pulsed Power and Energy Laboratory (PPEL) and Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD).
Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) Operational Energy Innovation office through its Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund (OECIF), the Evaluation of Electric Vehicle Batteries to Enable Directed Energy (EEVBEDE) project will evaluate The General’s Ultium technologies in order to understand the present capabilities of commercial automotive batteries under dynamic discharge and charge scenarios. The hope is that this evaluation will provide options for domestically supplied energy storage for future use in military platforms.
“The Department of Defense can benefit from billions of dollars in GM investments to develop and manufacture transformative battery technologies,” GM Defense President Steve duMont remarked in a prepared statement. “These technologies offer significant potential to enhance operational capability, whether at the tactical edge or on installations throughout the world. GM Defense welcomes the opportunity to support this important project and to help transition our global defense and government customers.”
It’s worth noting that GM Defense is hoping to solve the DoD’s energy and energy storage challenges through its modular and scalable GM Ultium architecture, which can utilize different chemistries and cell form factors that allow it to adapt to changing needs and new technology insertions as they become available.
“We are excited to work with GM Defense to test the Ultium Platform to determine its potential for use in future war fighting applications,” PPEL Director and UTA Electrical Engineering Professor David Wetz stated. “PPEL has a long relationship with the DoD and the Office of Naval Research for testing the limits of batteries used in high power applications, and we are in a unique position to evaluate this technology and make recommendations for future use cases.”
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