General Motors is pushing hard into energy storage for data centers and the electric grid. The company announced a sodium-ion battery development partnership with Peak Energy, a lithium iron phosphate supply deal with LG Energy Solution, and an expanded relationship with battery recycling firm Redwood Materials.
These moves represent GM’s clearest signal yet that it sees its $900 million investment in battery chemistry as a business that extends well beyond the cars it sells.
The Peak Energy partnership: sodium-ion at scale
This is the most technically ambitious piece. GM will co-develop sodium-ion battery cells at its Battery Cell Development Center in Warren, Michigan, targeting trial production by 2028.
Sodium-ion cells use sodium, iron, and manganese instead of lithium, cobalt, and nickel — making them cheaper to produce and less dependent on China-centric supply chains. No automaker outside China has committed to sodium-ion development at this scale, making GM the first Western car company to move beyond research papers into production trials.
Peak Energy, a Bay Area startup backed by $100 million in funding, currently produces sodium-ion cells at a pilot facility in Escondido, California, and is building a larger factory targeting 10 GWh of annual capacity.
Why this matters
GM is framing its energy storage push as a way to monetize battery manufacturing capacity that currently only serves its vehicle business. The Battery Cell Development Center, which opened in 2024, was built to develop and test cell chemistries for GM’s electric vehicles. Adding stationary storage as a second revenue stream spreads that investment across a larger addressable market — especially as EV sales growth has slowed from the pace automakers projected two years ago.
The company also plans to install a 1 MW energy storage system from Redwood Materials at its Milford Proving Ground in Michigan, using second-life EV batteries. Redwood already operates a 12 MW, 63 MWh microgrid at a data center in Sparks, Nevada — the largest second-life battery deployment in North America.
The risks
GM has no track record in energy storage, and it’s competing against established players like Tesla Energy, Fluence, and BYD’s energy storage division. Sodium-ion technology is also unproven at commercial scale outside China, where CATL and BYD have shipped cells but haven’t yet demonstrated the cycle life that utility customers require over 15-to-20-year project lifetimes.
What GM does have is manufacturing infrastructure and purchasing power. The company has committed $900 million to battery chemistry R&D since 2022, operates one of the few dedicated battery cell development facilities in North America, and has relationships with suppliers across both the automotive and energy sectors. Whether that translates into a competitive energy storage business depends on execution — and on whether sodium-ion cells can meet cost and performance targets by the time the Milford system and LG partnership generate their first real-world data.
