GM Invests in Canadian EV Battery Recycling Company Lithion Recycling Inc.

GM Ventures, GM’s investment arm, has made a strategic investment in Lithion Recycling Inc’s Series A financing round, supporting a new GM-Lithion strategic partnership agreement to pursue a circular battery ecosystem using Lithion’s advanced battery recycling technology. The collaboration will focus on validation of Lithion’s recovered battery materials for use in the production of new batteries, and potential to acquire battery materials

There will also be joint investment in research and development for both recycling processes and recyclability of future battery design.

Lithion has developed an efficient and cost-effective process to recover strategic materials from end-of-life and industrial waste of lithium-ion batteries.

Its technology allows up to 95% of battery components to be recovered and treated so they can be used again by battery manufacturers, enabling the circularity of those batteries. 

Its goal is worldwide deployment, through licensing agreements, with a target of 25 recycling plants on a world scale by 2035.

Benoit Couture, president and CEO of Lithion, says: “Working with GM marks a key step in Lithion’s commercial development and pioneers a needed breakthrough in the electrification of transportation by enabling a cost-effective and sustainable circularity in the EV battery industry. This partnership underscores our commitment to enable the transition to a low-carbon economy amidst the fight against climate change.”

“GM is aggressively scaling battery cell and EV production in North America to reach our target of more than 1 million units of annual capacity by 2025, and we plan to eliminate tailpipe emissions from all our new light-duty vehicles by 2035 – so we are building a supply chain and recycling strategy that can grow with us,” adds Jeff Morrison, GM vice president, Global Purchasing and Supply Chain. “In Lithion’s technology, we see the opportunity to recover and reuse raw material in our Ultium battery packs, making the EVs we produce even more sustainable and helping drive down costs.”

In August, 2022, Ultium Cells, GM’s joint venture with LG Energy Solution, opened its first U.S. battery cell plant, with two additional plants under construction.

A fourth planned battery cell plant will bring GM’s projected total U.S. battery capacity to 160 GWh.