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Unlocking Thacker Pass: General Motors to Contribute Combined $625 Million in Cash and Letters of Credit to New Joint Venture with Lithium Americas
Lithium Americas Corp. (TSX: LAC) (NYSE: LAC)announced the Company and General Motors Holdings LLC (“GM”) have entered into a new investment agreement to establish a joint venture for the purpose of funding, developing, constructing and operating Thacker Pass in Humboldt County, Nevada. The $625 million of cash and letters of credit from GM to Thacker Pass alongside the conditional commitment for a $2.3 billion U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) loan announced earlier this year.
Under the terms of the Investment Agreement, GM will acquire a 38% asset-level ownership stake in Thacker Pass for $625 million in total cash and letters of credit (“GM’s JV Investment”), including $430 million of direct cash funding to the JV to support the construction of Phase 11 and a $195 million letter of credit facility (“LC Facility”) that can be used as collateral to support reserve account requirements2 under the DOE Loan (as defined below). The JV Transaction replaces the $330 million Tranche 2 common equity investment commitment from GM under its original investment agreement with the Company (“Tranche 2”) announced in January 2023.
Forge Nano Receives $10M Investment from GM Ventures to Pursue GM Battery Material Enhancements for Future Electric Vehicles
Forge Nano, Inc., a materials science company that uses its Atomic Armor™ Atomic Layer Deposition technology to optimize material performance to enable better products, announced a $10M investment from GM Ventures, the venture arm of General Motors (NYSE: GM). The investment adds to its previous $50 million Series C with participation from Hanwha (KRX: 000880), Orion Infrastructure Capital (NYSE: ORN), Catalus Capital and Ascent Funds. The company has raised more than $100 million to date with additional investments from Volkswagen (OTC: VWAGY), Mitsui Kinzoku (OTC: MMSMY), LG Technology Ventures (KRX: 003550), Sumitomo Corporation of Americas (OTC: SSUMF), Air Liquide (OTC: AIQUY) and SBI Investment (OTC: SBHGF).
The GM Ventures investment positions Forge Nano to further enhance its Atomic Armor platform technology, which allows for the application of thin coatings to the surface of materials or objects to enhance the underlying substance’s performance and durability. Forge Nano intends to continue to expand its battery material coating business, which includes in-house active material coating services, external equipment sales and production of Atomic Armor-powered battery cells, as well as expand its footprint in semiconductors.
Multi-agent reinforcement learning for integrated manufacturing system-process control
The increasing complexity, adaptability, and interconnections inherent in modern manufacturing systems have spurred a demand for integrated methodologies to boost productivity, improve quality, and streamline operations across the entire system. This paper introduces a holistic system-process modeling and control approach, utilizing a Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) based integrated control scheme to optimize system yields. The key innovation of this work lies in integrating the theoretical development of manufacturing system-process property understanding with enhanced MARL-based control strategies, thereby improving system dynamics comprehension. This, in turn, enhances informed decision-making and contributes to overall efficiency improvements. In addition, we present two innovative MARL algorithms: the credit-assigned multi-agent actor-attention-critic (C-MAAC) and the physics-guided multi-agent actor-attention-critic (P-MAAC), each designed to capture the individual contributions of agents within the system. C-MAAC extracts global information via parallel-trained attention blocks, whereas P-MAAC embeds system dynamics through permanent production loss (PPL) attribution. Numerical experiments underscore the efficacy of our MARL-based control scheme, particularly highlighting the superior training and execution performance of C-MAAC and P-MAAC. Notably, P-MAAC achieves rapid convergence and exhibits remarkable robustness against environmental variations, validating the proposed approach’s practical relevance and effectiveness.
GM Signs Landmark Solar Power Deal for Three Assembly Plants
As part of an ongoing push around renewable energy, we’re announcing a 15-year renewable energy purchase agreement with NorthStar Clean Energy for three GM assembly plants.
NorthStar’s Newport Solar project in Newport, Arkansas, will support the electricity needs of GM’s Lansing Delta Township Assembly and Lansing Grand River Assembly in Michigan, and the Wentzville Assembly site in Missouri by adding renewable energy directly to the grid we source from. The Newport project has a capacity of 180 megawatts. NorthStar Clean Energy is a unit of CMS Energy.
Led by GM Ventures, Addionics Raises $39 Million Series B to Drive Cost-Efficient EV Battery Innovation
Addionics, a global leader in battery technology, announced its Series B funding round of $39 Million. The round was co-led by GM Ventures and Deep Insight, with participation from Scania, along with new and returning strategic investors. The funds will be used to bolster the company’s manufacturing capabilities and advance global business engagements. The investment will allow Addionics to build up teams across the globe, and expand its manufacturing and commercialization efforts, including advancing the construction of its planned US-based giga-factory for the production of Addionics 3D Current Collectors.
Li Industries Closes $42M in Series B Funding, Announces New Investors
Li Industries announced the successful closing of its Series B funding round with an additional $6 million commitment from investors. The new investors include General Motors (GM) Ventures, DNX Ventures, and Tech Energy Ventures. This latest investment brings the total size of the Series B round to $42 million and increases Li Industries’ total funding to date to over $50 million.
Li Industries plans to expand its 10,000 tonne recycling facility and further develop its cutting-edge recycling technologies. The company is dedicated to addressing the environmental challenges posed by end-of-life batteries and production waste, transforming them into valuable resources in a cleaner and more cost-effective manner.
General Motors Partners with Optilogic to Solve Complex Global Supply Chain Decisions with Real-Time Results Monitoring
Supply chain design software innovator Optilogic announced a strategic supply agreement with General Motors Co. to use Optilogic’s proprietary supply chain solution, Cosmic Frog, in its Customer Care and Aftersales organization. The software will enable the CCA organization to solve complex supply chain design problems at the SKU level to deliver increased accuracy and logistical efficiency.
Partnering with Optilogic will empower General Motors to analyze its end-to-end supply chain network at group levels, such as customers, suppliers and sub-assemblies—all the way down to individual parts with separate SKUs. The ability to leverage Cosmic Frog’s models with apps developed by users to democratize decision-making across the globe will also enable General Motors to collaborate, co-create and share supply chain design models in real-time worldwide.
Inside the Factory Producing Massive Ford Trucks From Scratch
3D Printing Car Parts for General Motors with Azoth 3D
NPS Completes $17.5M Series B Funding for Software-Defined Radar Led by Cota Capital with Key Strategic Investment from GM Ventures and RTX Ventures
Neural Propulsion Systems (NPS), a pioneer in software-defined radar, announced it secured a $17.5 million Series B funding round. The round is led by Cota Capital with contributions from GM Ventures, the venture capital arm of General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), and RTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of RTX (NYSE: RTX). This collaboration marks a transformative step in enhancing roadway safety (benefiting pedestrians, drivers and all other traffic participants) and defense radar systems.
NPS will use the investment to further develop and apply its award-winning Atomic Sensing Platform to automotive radar technology. The platform provides significantly enhanced, reliable radar resolution and groundbreaking precision. The improved performance stems from a new mathematical framework known as the Atomic Norm (AN), revolutionizing how the raw sensor data is processed into relevant information.
GeoPura closes £56 million investment round with backing from UK Infrastructure Bank to accelerate UK’s green hydrogen expansion
GeoPura has completed a £56 million investment round that will help accelerate the UK’s adoption of green hydrogen by expanding production capacity, growing the specialist workforce in the UK, and increasing the deployment of our power generation technology.
The UK Infrastructure Bank committed ÂŁ30million to the round, led by a follow-on investment from Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital and supported by our existing investors: GM Ventures, SWEN Capital Partners, and Siemens Energy Ventures.
The financing will directly increase the manufacture and supply of GeoPura’s Hydrogen Power Units (HPUs) in Newcastle, which replace traditional diesel generators and emit zero harmful emissions. The HPUs have already been successfully supplied to a wide range of high-profile customers including the Ministry of Defence, Balfour Beatty, National Grid and the BBC.
GM-Honda Begin Commercial Production at Industry’s First Hydrogen Fuel Cell System Manufacturing Joint Venture
In a pivotal moment in the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cell systems, GM and Honda today announced the start of production at their 50-50 joint venture production facility, FCSM. FCSM is the first large-scale manufacturing joint venture to build fuel cells. FCSM was established in Brownstown, Michigan, in January 2017 based on a joint investment of $85 million. The 70,000-square-foot facility has already created 80 jobs. The world-class hydrogen power solutions built at FCSM will be used by both companies in various product applications and business ventures.
GM takes 3D printing to new heights with Cadillac CELESTIQ
The Cadillac CELESTIQ integrates 115 metal and polymer 3D printed components, including a metal laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) steering wheel, 3D printed window switches, grab handles, decorative parts, and structural seatbelt D-rings, which holds the title of being GM’s first 3D printed safety-related part. It’s no surprise that the new low-volume vehicle represents the broadest integration of 3D printed production parts for GM. And we wanted to understand how the company got there; how it has pursued AM so successfully and where it’s going with the technology.
While GM uses a wide array of additive processes across its business, there are a few specific processes that have really excelled for the company’s production applications: metal binder jetting, metal LPBF, and HP’s Multi Jet Fusion.
GM snatches key Tesla gigacasting supplier TEI
For years, a little-known company called Tooling & Equipment International (TEI) has helped Tesla push back the frontiers of “gigacasting”, the process it pioneered to cast large body parts for cars in one piece to save time and money. Until 2023, that is. TEI is now part of General Motors after agreeing a deal that may have flown under the radar but is a key part of the U.S. automaker’s strategy to make up ground on Tesla, four people familiar with the transaction said.
By snapping up a specialist in sand casting techniques that accelerated the development of Tesla’s gigacasting molds and allowed it to cast more complex components, GM has jump-started its own push to make cars more cheaply and efficiently at a time when Tesla is racing to roll out a $25,000 EV, the people said.
With TEI gone, Tesla is leaning more heavily on three other casting specialists it has used in Britain, Germany and Japan to develop the huge molds needed for the millions of cheaper EVs it plans to make in the coming decade, the four people said.
Niron Magnetics Secures $33M from Leading Automotive Manufacturers to Meet Growing Demand for Rare Earth-Free Magnets
Niron Magnetics, the company pioneering the world’s first high-performance, rare earth-free permanent magnets, today announced it has raised $33 million in additional funding, with new investments from leading automotive manufacturers, GM Ventures and Stellantis Ventures, and previous local investors, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC) and the University of Minnesota (UMN), amongst other investors. This new financing will allow Niron to expand its current pilot production facilities and scale manufacturing capacity for exclusive customer programs and initial sales of its Clean Earth Magnet®.
Permanent magnets are essential components in all automobiles, fundamental to audio systems, fuel pumps, air circulation, electric vehicle (EV) drivetrains, and much more. As more cars are bought around the globe and demand surges for EVs, so does the demand for more stable and sustainable alternatives to rare-earth materials. This new round of funding will advance the commercialization of Niron’s Iron Nitride-based Clean Earth Magnets, which are environmentally sustainable, globally manufacturable, and made from stable supply inputs. Further, Niron’s alternative to rare-earth magnets promises improved temperature stability compared to other options currently available on the market, which is critical for automotive use.
🔋 Mitra Chem Announces First Close of $60 Million Series B Round Led by GM
Mitra Future Technologies Inc. (“Mitra Chem”), a leading innovator in North American production of lithium-ion battery materials, announced the completion of a $40 million first close of $60 million Series B funding round led by GM. The investment will fuel Mitra Chem’s mission to develop, deploy and commercialize U.S.-made iron-based cathode materials in an effort to enable mass-market electrification for electric vehicles, energy storage solutions, and beyond.
As part of the partnership with GM, Mitra Chem will develop iron-based cathode active materials (CAM) like lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) to power affordable and accessible EV batteries compatible with GM’s EV propulsion architecture, the Ultium Platform. GM’s funding will enable Mitra Chem to scale its current R&D and pilot operations to expedite bringing their battery materials to market.
🚙🔌 General Motors Doubles Down on Commitment to a Unified Charging Standard and Expands Charging Access to Tesla Supercharger Network
General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) announced today a collaboration with Tesla to integrate the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector design into its EVs beginning in 2025. Additionally, the collaboration will expand access to charging for GM EV drivers at 12,000 Tesla Superchargers, and growing, throughout North America. This agreement complements GM’s ongoing investments in charging, reinforcing the company’s focus on expanding charging access across home, workplace, and public spaces and builds on the more than 134,000 chargers available to GM EV drivers today through the company’s Ultium Charge 360 initiative and mobile apps.
The Tesla Supercharger Network will be open to GM EV drivers starting in 2024 and will initially require the use of an adapter. Beginning in 2025, the first GM EVs will be built with a NACS inlet for direct access to Tesla Superchargers without an adapter. In the future, GM will make adapters available for drivers of NACS-enabled vehicles to allow charging on CCS-capable fast charge stations.
3Din30: How Its Made – the Evolution of Tooling
đźš™ UVeye Series D Funding Round Tops $100 Million for Major Expansion in U.S.
UVeye, a pioneer in the development of automated vehicle-inspection systems for the auto industry, has secured $100 million in additional funding to support major new sales and manufacturing initiatives in North America. The company’s recently completed Series D investment round was led by Hanaco VC, a venture-capital firm based in New York and Tel Aviv with $1.5 billion in assets under management.
Series D funding will be used to start production of UVeye inspection systems in North America, support further sales growth in the U.S. and fuel new-market expansion efforts.
GM Ramps Up Effort to Bring Customers Seamless Software Experiences Through Unified Automotive Standards
General Motors announced today that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open source software foundations. It has also contributed “uProtocol” as a starting point for greater standardization, enabling increased software productivity across the automotive industry that can lead to easy-to-use, software-enabled customer experiences. This protocol aims to speed up software development by streamlining the creation of software that is distributed across multiple devices within vehicles as well as across the cloud and mobile.
GM will participate in the Eclipse Foundation’s Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Working Group, which is focused on accelerating innovation of automotive-grade software stacks using open source and open specifications developed by and for a growing community of engineers and member companies. Collaborators on GM’s Ultifi software platform including Microsoft and Red Hat, as well as multiple other automakers, participate in the group.
General Motors and Samsung SDI Plan to Invest More than $3 Billion to Expand U.S. Battery Cell Manufacturing
General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) and Samsung SDI announced today they plan to invest more than $3 billion to build a new battery cell manufacturing plant in the United States that is targeted to begin operations in 2026. The plant will have more than 30 GWh of capacity and will bring GM’s total U.S. battery cell capacity to about 160 GWh when it is at full production. The companies plan to jointly operate the facility, and it is projected to have production lines to build nickel-rich prismatic and cylindrical cells.
🔋 Nanoramic Laboratories and General Motors to Collaborate on Cost and Sustainability of Lithium-ion Batteries for Electric Vehicles
Nanoramic Laboratories (“Nanoramic”) today announced that GM Ventures, the venture capital arm of General Motors Co. (NYSE GM), has made a strategic investment in a leading energy storage and advanced materials company, Nanoramic. The collaboration focuses on joint development and application of Nanoramic’s proprietary Neocarbonix® at the Core electrode technology for EV lithium-ion batteries, which targets improvements in EV battery cost, efficiency, and sustainability.
Nanoramic’s Neocarbonix® at the Core is an electrode technology platform for cathode and anode designed for high-throughput manufacturing free of N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) solvent, enabling batteries with lower cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and excellent performance. Neocarbonix® achieves this by replacing conventional binder systems with a 3D nanocarbon mesh. This eliminates polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binders from the cathode and the related need for NMP solvent in the manufacturing process. When applied to anode, Neocarbonix® enables long-cycle-life silicon anodes using low-cost active materials.
⛏️🔋 GM Leads $50 Million Funding Round in EnergyX to Unlock U.S.-Based Lithium Supply for Rapidly Scaling EV Production
Energy Exploration Technologies Inc. (“EnergyX”) and General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) today announced that GM Ventures is leading a $50 million Series B financing round in EnergyX, and has entered into a strategic agreement to develop EnergyX’s lithium extraction and refinery technology. The collaboration is focused on unlocking the North American supply of lithium, a critical material for EV batteries, by using EnergyX’s innovative process to maximize efficiency while improving sustainability for GM’s rapidly scaling EV production.
EnergyX’s direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology portfolio can make lithium metal directly from brine and potentially in anode-ready form for EV batteries, which enables more cost effective and sustainable lithium recovery to unlock a vast lithium supply chain in North America that may otherwise be unviable.
U.S. Steel Signs Supply Agreement With General Motors For U.S.-Sourced Sustainable VerdeX Steel
United States Steel Corp. will supply General Motors \with its advanced and sustainable steel solution called verdeX steel. The steel is manufactured with up to 75 percent fewer emissions compared to traditional blast furnace production1, is made with up to 90 percent recycled content and is endlessly recyclable without degradation.
U.S. Steel’s verdeX steel will be manufactured at Big River Steel, a LEED Certified facility that also meets the ResponsibleSteel Standard site certification, along with a new advanced technology mill under construction in Osceola, Arkansas. The steel produced at the Big River Steel facility will begin shipping to GM manufacturing facilities starting this year.
🖥️🚙 General Motors signs deal with GlobalFoundries for exclusive U.S. semiconductor production
The chip manufacturer will establish dedicated production capacity exclusively for key auto suppliers of the Detroit automaker at its semiconductor facility in upstate New York, according to the companies. Caulfield said the exclusive production for GM is expected to take two to three years to really ramp up.
MycoWorks & General Motors
Biotechnology company MycoWorks announced today its newest investor GM Ventures, the investment arm of General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), and their long-term agreement to co-develop Fine Mycelium™ materials for potential use in a range of applications within automotive design. MycoWorks’ collaboration with GM marks the exploration of its entry into one of the largest end-use markets for leather and demonstrates the significant opportunity to create more sustainable materials for the automotive space.
The Power of Predictive Maintenance
“Getting to the level of predictive maintenance is an evolutionary process for manufacturers, regardless of their specialty,” notes Will Healy III, global business strategy manager at Balluff Inc. “Right now, there is great interest in retrofitting equipment with sensors to perform condition monitoring as a means to implement predictive maintenance. The next step is using equipment with integrated smart sensors and artificial intelligence. These technologies also enable prescriptive maintenance, which uses machine learning to help companies specifically adjust their operating conditions for desired production outcomes.”
One of the first robotic predictive maintenance applications of the IIoT occurred several years ago in the auto industry when General Motors teamed up with Cisco and FANUC America Corp. to launch a zero downtime program. Called ZDT, the predictive analytics service identifies potential failures so engineers and plant managers can schedule maintenance and repairs. This prevents unexpected breakdowns during production, thereby saving manufacturers time and money. According to Tuohy, the ZDT program has proven to be quite successful over the last several years. He says that about 30,000 robots worldwide are connected to the system.
UVeye Enters into Strategic Collaboration with General Motors to Expand Technology to Global Dealerships
UVeye, a provider of advanced vehicle diagnostic systems, today announced that it has received an investment from the capital venture arm of General Motors, GM Ventures, to help fund the development and commercialization of the company’s vehicle inspection technology.
As part of the strategic collaboration agreement, the two companies have agreed to work on a variety of vehicle-inspection technology projects involving used-car auctions, fleet operations and automotive dealership sales. In the future, UVeye plans to incorporate electric-vehicle and autonomous-driving platforms into its inspection databases as well.
GM Buying Out SoftBank's $2.1 Billion Stake in Cruise Self-Driving Cars
American automaker General Motors announced Friday it is acquiring SoftBank’s $2.1 billion stake in its autonomous car venture Cruise. In addition, GM will chip in another $1.35 billion investment to cover a commitment made in 2018 by the Vision Fund of SoftBank, a Japanese telecom giant. The Detroit firm has ramped up its investments in autonomous technology and its build-out of electric vehicle capacity as it looks to curb emissions and engage in a technology race with Tesla and other self-driving ventures.
Missing Chips Snarl Car Production at Factories Worldwide
Semiconductor shortages may persist throughout the first half as chipmakers adjust their operations, researcher IHS Market predicted on Dec. 23. Automakers will start to see component supply gradually ease in the next two to three months, China Passenger Car Association, which groups the country’s largest carmakers, said Monday.
Chipmakers favor consumer-electronics customers because their orders are larger than those of automakers – the annual smartphone market alone is more than 1 billion devices, compared with fewer than 100 million cars. Automaking is also a lower-margin business, leaving manufacturers unwilling to bid up chip prices as they avoid risking their profitability.
How Ford, GM, FCA, and Tesla are bringing back factory workers
In the last week, factory employees have returned to work across the United States to make cars for the country’s four main auto manufacturers: Ford, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and Tesla. And each of those companies has published a plan showing how it will try to keep those workers from contracting or spreading COVID-19.
Those plans largely take the same shape. They’re presented in glossy PDF pamphlets, each starting with a letter to employees from the respective company’s highest-ranking executive overseeing workplace safety. Like any corporate document, they occasionally get bogged down with platitudes. But they all largely describe a lot of the same basic precautions, including supplying employees with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) like masks or enforcing physical distancing of at least six feet.
How GM and Ford switched out pickup trucks for breathing machines
In the most severe cases of COVID-19, a patient’s lungs become so inflamed and full of fluid that they no longer deliver enough oxygen to the bloodstream to keep that person alive. One way to counteract this is by using a ventilator, which helps the patient’s lungs operate while the rest of the body fights off the virus.
As the spread of the new coronavirus bloomed into a pandemic, it became clear that there may not be enough ventilators in the United States (and around the world) to treat the coming wave of patients with these severe symptoms.