TRENDING NOW:
As planned, today GM has produced the first Volt battery pack at its Brownstown Battery Pack Assembly Plant.
The General invested a total of $43 million last August to prepare the 160,000-square-foot, landfill-free facility for production of the lithium ion battery packs that will be used in the Volt as well as in other extended-range electric vehicles. The plant, part of wholly-owned GM subsidiary GM Subsystems Manufacturing LLC, has been converted from an empty facility to a production-ready battery manufacturing site in a very short five months.
The initial set of battery packs manufactured at the Brownstown plant will be used for testing and validation purposes and sent to GM’s Global Battery Systems lab in Warren for testing. Later this spring, the plant will begin shipping the batteries to GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant – the final assembly location for the Volt. These batteries will be used in production-validation Volts (read: test units).
We’ll let GM tell you the rest:
New machinery and specialized equipment have been installed and three primary assembly areas have been completed: battery module pre-assembly, final assembly and the battery pack main line.
The Volt’s battery pack is made up of multiple linked battery modules and more than 200 battery cells. The initial assembly area is where the prismatic-shaped cells are processed and installed by state-of-the-art flexible automated equipment into modules, which are then delivered to the battery pack main line.
The battery pack main line area features an Automated Guided Cart (ACG) system that includes operations for thermal and electrical assembly, along with quality and dimensional checks. The main line is also where battery pack final testing, verification and packaging for shipment take place
Every day brings us closer to the release date of the Chevy Volt, and we can’t wait. The fact that GM is perfecting the mass-market manufacturing of the Volt and its components (such as the battery pack) makes it that much more exciting. Rock on GM, rock on!
Here’s GM’s full presser: (more…)
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