GM Defense, a subsidiary of General Motors, said it is providing commercial battery electric technology in support of the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Pulsed Power and Energy Laboratory (PPEL) and Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD). The project, Evaluation of Electric Vehicle Batteries to Enable Directed Energy (EEVBEDE), is funded by the Operational Energy Innovation Office of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), through its Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund (OECIF). GM Defense said UTA PPEL will evaluate the technology to understand the current capabilities of commercial automotive batteries under dynamic discharge and charge scenarios and the team’s evaluation of the technology will help provide pathways and options for domestically supplied energy storage for future use in military platforms.

GM Defense said it is leveraging GM’s Ultium Platform propulsion architecture for evaluation and testing. Modular and scalable, the Ultium Platform can use different chemistries and cell form factors, making it adaptable to changing needs and new technology insertions as they become available, according to GM Defense. The work performed in this latest effort will provide insights into the performance and design considerations when batteries are used in more dynamic, high-power operations than would be faced by more typical applications. OECIF support plays a key role in the development of new power and energy technologies, which provide the DoD with advanced capabilities and help prevent power and energy from being a limiting factor, GM Defense said.

“The Department of Defense can benefit from billions of dollars in GM investments to develop and manufacture transformative battery technologies,” Steve duMont, president of GM Defense, said. “These technologies offer significant potential to enhance operational capability, whether at the tactical edge or on installations throughout the world. GM Defense welcomes the opportunity to support this important project and to help transition our global defense and government customers.”

GM Defense previously announced its participation in the Defense Innovation Unit’s Jumpstart for Advanced Battery Standardization (JABS) project. Similar to EEVBEDE, JABS is designed to evaluate and test high-voltage battery systems to optimize commercial technologies, GM Defense said. GM Defense provided a prototype of a battery system based on GM’s Ultium Platform for the project. Under the same contract, GM Defense said it demonstrated mission power capabilities by integrating a high-voltage battery pack into a light tactical utility vehicle and that key learnings from JABS will help inform the integration requirements of future battery electric defense solutions.