GM's electric collapse and Geely's megawatt battery: the EV battery week in numbers

On 1 October, The Next Web reported that General Motors' third-quarter sales fell 5.5% and its electric lineup collapsed. The Equinox EV dropped 92.4% to 1,905 cars, the Blazer EV 84.4% and the Hummer EV 72.9%. GM sold 670,974 vehicles in the quarter, the report says, citing CNBC. The company's second-quarter sales had already fallen 4%. Its lead over Toyota is down to under 136,000 vehicles this year, against roughly 335,000 for the whole of last year.

The cause is not a mystery. The $7,500 US purchase credit ended on 30 September 2025, and last year's comparison quarter was inflated by buyers racing that deadline. Toyota went the other way, up 0.6% to 633,223 units, with electrified models including hybrids up 28.5% and above 57% of its total. Honda rose 9.3% on a record hybrid quarter above 106,000 units. GM sells one hybrid, a Corvette.

Duncan Aldred, GM's North America president, said the business is performing very well. The number that argues with him is 1,905.

What the money is doing instead

The battery money is not sitting still. On 29 September, GM announced that its Ultium Cells joint venture with LG Energy Solution will upgrade the Spring Hill, Tennessee plant to build LMR, or lithium manganese rich, cells, according to CleanTechnica, which reported the announcement the following day. GM put its combined LFP and LMR investment at $2 billion by 2030. The BBC reported on 29 September that US startups are chasing the same ground from the other end: San Diego-based Unigrid sells a 9 kWh sodium-ion home battery using cells made in China, has shipped its first 100 units and expects 1,000 before the end of the year, according to co-founder and chief executive Darren Tan.

Unigrid's cathode contains chromium-3. Prof Dame Clare Grey at the University of Cambridge, co-founder of battery firm Nyobolt, told the BBC that under certain conditions chromium-3 may form chromium-6, a toxic, cancer-causing material. Ivana Hasa, at the Warwick Manufacturing Group, said chromium-6 formation is possible at very high states of charge but can be mitigated by voltage control, and called the reported cell safety tests very promising. Tan said the concerns are overblown and that third-party tests have not produced chromium-6.

Europe has its own arithmetic problem. Transport & Environment analysis published on 30 September argues the EU can deliver enough cells for the Industrial Accelerator Act's scope by 2030 if all projects materialise, and that local content requirements for cells and cathode active materials could add 34% to EU battery demand in 2027 over the current baseline. The group says China controls up to 90% of global pCAM and CAM production capacity depending on chemistry, and 95% for LFP. Xavier Sol, the group's director of sustainable investments and batteries, said European industrial competitiveness hinges on whether high value clean tech jobs come to Europe or remain in Asia.

Fast charging moves to the megawatt

InsideEVs reported on 30 September that Geely Auto Group's new Ultra Short Blade Battery can peak at nearly 1,100 kilowatts, and that the company demonstrated a Lynk & Co 10 charging from 10% to 97% in 8 minutes and 40 seconds. For scale, the report puts the fastest US EVs at 400 kW, with the upcoming Mercedes-AMG GT at 600 kW. Geely chief executive Jerry Gan said: "We do not advocate fast-charging technologies at the expense of lifespan. If a battery frequently fast-charged is not maintained or repaired, its lifespan suffers irreversible decline." The company extended the battery's warranty from eight years, 150,000 km to eight years, 200,000 km.

BYD is pushing a different lever. Electrek reported on 29 September that a new Yangwang flagship sedan, about 5.5 metres long, has been spotted testing in China and is expected to be BYD's first EV to use solid-state batteries, according to China's Autohome. Yangwang general manager Hu Xiaoqing confirmed on Weibo that the name is not final; internally it is called HU. Yangwang executive general manager Zheng Yu said the car will feature "unprecedented disruptive technology". BYD executive vice president Stella Li told Carwow.es earlier in September that the company is in the leading position in solid-state tech and will prove it with a first vehicle in 2027. FinDreams, BYD's battery arm, aims to produce sulfide-based all-solid-state batteries in limited batches in 2027 and scale to mass production by 2030.

Range figures are moving in the same direction on the product side. JLR's Range Rover Sport Electric, announced on 29 September, carries a 118.5 kWh battery and an 800-volt architecture. WIRED reported a WLTP figure of up to 374 miles and a 10 to 80 percent charge in 22 minutes; InsideEVs reported a WLTP-rated 378 miles and charging at up to 350 kW. The two outlets disagree slightly on the range number. InsideEVs also reported that the model is not coming to the United States as a 2027 model, according to a company representative.

The grid side is where the risk sits

Stationary storage is growing faster than the insurance market's ability to price it. pv magazine reported on 1 October that Olly Litterick, head of renewables at Tokio Marine GX, sees "hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions of dollars of exposure in a single location where multiple insureds share grid connection points". He said a failure at a shared export point can hit several insured projects at once, and that BESS is the underwriting business's fastest-growing technology on a compound annual growth basis. Thermal runaway remains the main driver of probable maximum loss estimates.

In Germany, the storage boom has an application queue attached. Heise reported on 1 October that Mitnetz Strom recorded more than 10,000 storage registrations by mid-September, and its managing director Lutz Eckenroth described a "tsunami" of applications and "Goldgraeberstimmung" among large-scale storage developers. Eco Stor is building 300 MW and 700 MWh at Foerderstedt in Saxony-Anhalt, enough to supply roughly 500,000 households for two hours on paper. Its managing director, Georg Gallmetzer, believes nine out of ten megawatts currently applied for will never connect. Mitnetz figures in the same report: 33 large storage systems connected by the end of last year, against 2,500 applied-for projects not realised over the same period.

Smaller distributed batteries are taking a different route around the same bottleneck. MIT Technology Review reported on 1 October that PopWheels runs about 50 battery-swap cabinets and roughly 2,500 batteries in New York City for delivery riders, and has started supplying food cart operators, where about four of its batteries supply 5 kWh, roughly a day's operation for many carts. Copper builds induction stoves with integrated batteries; Every Electric plugs batteries into air-conditioning units; David Energy targets laundromats, parking garages and gyms. James McGinniss, co-founder and chief executive of David Energy, called it "the biggest thing to happen in the power grid sector in the last 20 years".

On the heavy equipment side, CleanTechnica reported on 1 October that its assembled estimate puts the global battery-electric reach stacker fleet at roughly 1,500 machines, perhaps 15% to 16% of a worldwide fleet around 9,300. Reliance Transport in New Zealand reports its 74-tonne SANY electric reach stacker uses about 33 kWh per operating hour while completing full eight-hour shifts. An APM Terminals and DP World analysis in 2023 still estimated battery-electric reach stackers at about 15% higher total cost of ownership than diesel, but expected parity within roughly five years.

The policy gap between the US and Europe remains the cleanest single explanation for the divergence. The Next Web noted that electric cars took 29% of new registrations in Europe in August, with a British mandate asking for 33% of sales this year, while the US removed its subsidy and replaced it with nothing. Petrol averages $4.41 a gallon in the US, the report says, against an EU weighted average of EUR 2.092, roughly $8.95 a gallon.