The head of General Motors’ electric vehicle business is staking his reputation on an unproven battery chemistry to revive the Detroit-based carmaker’s EV fortunes following $7.6bn in writedowns.
Kurt Kelty said his “ambitious and risky” bet on becoming the first global carmaker to use a lithium manganese-rich battery technology, which critics regard as commercially unviable, is necessary to resuscitate US EV uptake. GM expects to deliver its first LMR-powered vehicles in 2028.
“If LMR has failed, then I have failed . . . but if you don’t take any risk, we’re just going to be making the same old thing and just have copycat vehicles out there, and that’s not what I was brought in to do,” said Kelty, an alumnus of Tesla and Panasonic, who was hired in 2024 to spearhead GM’s EV development.