GM and LG's New Battery Bet: What Lithium-Manganese-Rich Cells Mean for EV Prices

The Announcement

General Motors and LG Energy Solution announced in May 2025 that they plan to manufacture a new type of battery cell for electric vehicles — specifically, Lithium Manganese-Rich (LMR) cells shaped in a rectangular, prismatic form. According to GM's official statement, this move tackles a real problem in the EV market: the tension between how far a vehicle can travel on a single charge and how much the battery costs.

Electric trucks and SUVs have remained pricey in part because their batteries have relied heavily on expensive metals — especially cobalt and nickel. LMR chemistry swaps out nickel and cobalt in favor of manganese, a cheaper and more plentiful metal. The rectangular shape of these cells — as opposed to cylindrical or pouch-shaped alternatives — is engineered to pack more efficiently into a battery pack and handle heat better. Both matter for large vehicles like full-size pickup trucks.

What LMR Actually Offers

The core appeal of LMR is straightforward: more driving range per dollar, using cheaper raw materials. Manganese costs orders of magnitude less than cobalt or the high-grade nickel that conventional batteries use. For automakers, this is increasingly important because federal tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act have domestic content rules. If a vehicle's battery uses too much cobalt or nickel from foreign sources, it can lose eligibility for the tax credit. A battery with less cobalt and nickel helps vehicles qualify.

LMR has been researched since the early 2010s, but the chemistry had a persistent weakness: the battery would lose capacity and voltage as it was charged and discharged repeatedly. This degradation is why LMR remained in laboratories rather than in actual cars. GM and LGES are now announcing commercialization — not just a laboratory success, but an actual path to manufacturing. That word choice signals that they believe they have solved the cycle-life problem and can actually build and sell these cells at scale.

The decision to use a rectangular, prismatic shape is deliberate too. Prismatic cells work well with newer assembly methods that skip the intermediate step of bundling cells into modules. This saves weight and manufacturing cost — a playbook that Chinese automaker BYD perfected with its iron-phosphate batteries.

Where Sodium-Ion Fits — and Where It Doesn't

It is worth stepping back to see LMR in the broader battery landscape. Sodium-ion batteries have started shipping in electric vehicles and grid storage systems. Unlike lithium batteries, sodium-ion cells contain no lithium, cobalt, or nickel — which sounds like a total upgrade. But the tradeoff is that sodium-ion batteries are heavier and bulkier for the same amount of energy storage.

The segmentation matters because different use cases have different priorities. Sodium-ion makes sense for stationary power storage (where weight is irrelevant and you need the battery to survive many charge cycles) and tiny city cars (where range is short anyway). It is a poor fit for long-range trucks and SUVs where consumers expect 300+ miles per charge.

LMR occupies the middle ground — more energy-dense than sodium-ion or iron-phosphate batteries, but cheaper and cleaner than high-nickel batteries. If GM and LGES can deliver consistent cycle life at millions of cells a year, LMR could become the default choice for mid-range vehicles that need good range but don't justify premium prices.

The broader context here: When Chinese automakers quietly scaled iron-phosphate batteries into the dominant choice for mainstream vehicles, Western automakers were slow to follow. By the time they recognized the cost advantage, Chinese manufacturers had locked in the supply chain and market share. The GM–LGES LMR announcement reads, in part, as an effort to avoid repeating that miss with manganese-rich chemistry.

The Supply Chain Arithmetic

Cobalt and nickel producers will be watching this closely. Cobalt has been volatile and geopolitically risky — most comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where political instability can disrupt supplies. Any battery chemistry that substantially cuts cobalt use per vehicle reduces that exposure. Nickel demand, which surged as automakers adopted high-nickel batteries, would face structural headwinds if LMR scales broadly.

LGES operates large-format prismatic cell factories and already has joint ventures with GM through Ultium Cells, a battery manufacturing operation in Ohio and Tennessee. The new LMR cells would likely be built through that existing infrastructure, which matters for federal tax credit eligibility and for keeping those plants fully utilized as overall EV demand has grown more unevenly than many predicted.

What Remains Open

The announcement does not specify when production starts, which vehicles will get LMR cells first, or the exact energy density of the finished battery pack. These omissions are typical for early announcements, but they leave key questions unanswered: How many times can these cells be charged before meaningful degradation? How does the pack-level energy density compare to GM's current batteries? Which models arrive first?

Until GM and LGES publish those details — or until manufacturing announcements or regulatory filings reveal them — this remains a directional commitment. The chemistry direction makes sense. The partnership has the factories. But whether LMR can actually hold up over millions of cells, built at scale, charged thousands of times, is the test that separates this from many battery announcements that never left the press release.