General Motors is creating a new energy company to sell batteries, charging equipment, solar panels and software to residential and commercial customers in a broad effort to create a line of accessories that can help sell its line of electric vehicles.
The new division, GM Energy, is also a direct shot at Tesla into renewable energy generation and storage. GM has said it aims to overtake Elon Musk's company in vehicle sales – and now it appears it wants to overtake it in the energy sector as well.
Travis Hester, GM's EV Chief Officer, said the company is making a serious $120-150 billion investment in energy generation and storage products. Their goal is to make GM's new brand name synonymous not only with electric vehicles, but with a whole range of products and services that will revolve around EVs and rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.
GM Energy will consist of three units: Ultium Home, Ultium Commercial and Ultium Charge 360, which is the company's EV charging program. The new division will sell products to residential and commercial customers, including two-way charging equipment, vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging equipment, fixed storage, solar products, software applications, cloud management tools, microgrid solutions and hydrogen fuel cells.
GM Energy will also be in the virtual power plant business. Many electric vehicles with high-capacity batteries will be commercially available and act as backup power in the event of a power outage. (Hester reports that the Chevy Silverado EV, with its 200 kWh battery pack, can power an average-sized home for 21 days.) Electric cars will also be able to feed power back into utility grids during peak demand periods. GM Energy will undertake to sell this energy back to the utilities during periods of high energy consumption.
