GENERAL MOTORS LAUNCHES GM ENERGY, A NEW BUSINESS UNIT THAT AIMS TO INTEGRATE THE EV ECOSYSTEM

By Piero Facchin

Transportation requires more than just vehicles, it needs a whole ecosystem that includes road infrastructure, fuel production and distribution, raw materials, recycling, traffic management and of course vehicles. Successfully transitioning from our century-old oil-fuelled ecosystem to one that runs on electrons will require more than just battery-powered cars and trucks; it’s crucial to update the entire ecosystem. General Motors is adding a new business unit called GM Energy that aims to address more aspects of that ecosystem.

GM Energy is the next step in its efforts to support the complete electric vehicle ecosystem with energy and charge management systems, bidirectional charging and stationary storage. If this sounds familiar, that’s because GM isn’t the first to go down this path. For several years after Tesla began selling PowerWall home batteries and acquiring SolarCity, it was touted as an energy company.

Ford Pro also offers cloud-based charging management for fleets as well as home backup power from an F-150 Lightning. GM Energy will include three main segments: the Ultium Charge 360 platform, which helps electric vehicle drivers find and pay for charging on the go, Ultium Home and Ultium Commercial. All of this is tied to the GM Energy Services Cloud.

The goal of the home and commercial solutions is to make charging more cost-effective and convenient, as well as contribute to the resilience of the electric grid. There is generally considered to be more than enough power generation capacity to support an all-electric fleet, but the grid currently lacks reliability and capacity. Systems like the ones GM Energy and others are developing can help spread the load more evenly throughout the day so that generation can be used more efficiently.