GM
Energy will bundle the existing Ultium Charge 360 public
charging service with two new units, Ultium Home and Ultium
Commercial, that will offer stationary storage batteries, as
well as solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells, the company said
on Tuesday.
"We're getting into the entire ecosystem of energy management,"
GM executive Travis Hester said in an interview.
"Our competition in this space on the (automaker) side is really
only Tesla, which is a strong energy management company," added
Hester, who heads EV Growth Operations. "There are a lot of
analogies you can draw with Tesla."
Tesla's seven-year-old energy generation and storage business,
which includes solar panels and stationary batteries, lost $129
million last year on revenues of $2.8 billion.
Hester said GM sees a total addressable market of $120 billion
to $150 billion in energy storage and management. He declined to
provide a revenue projection for GM Energy.
The Ultium Home service will offer stationary wall boxes,
similar to Tesla's Powerwall units, with sales and installation
scheduled to start in late 2023, timed to the launch of the
first Chevrolet Silverado EV trucks aimed at private customers.
As Ford Motor Co does with its F-150 Lightning, the Silverado EV
will have bi-directional capability, which means it will be able
to feed electricity back into the home during a power outage.
GM's commercial service will offer similar capability to
businesses, through larger stationary storage units as well as
microgrids connected to hydrogen fuel cells developed by the
automaker. Businesses in turn will be able to sell energy back
to utilities during peak power consumption periods.
GM will team with SunPower Corp to provide customers with solar
panels to enhance energy generation.
"This is a new space for us," Hester said. "We have core
competencies in vehicles and batteries, in cell chemistry and
scale manufacturing. Put that together with our expertise in
fuel cells, our dealer network, what we've been doing with
OnStar and connectivity, and it seems like an obvious step for
us."
(Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit; Editing by Marguerita
Choy)
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