GM opens ground-breaking battery lab

Bankrupt car maker GM has still found the wherewithal to open its largest battery laboratory ever, lending further credence to its PHEV plans. The $25m (£15m) lab, to be based at the company's Technical Centre in Michigan, will span 33,000ft, and will be used by more than a thousand engineers to test the capability of the lithium batteries that are pegged to power the firm's Volt plug-in hybrid.

The lab, four times larger than the firm's previous battery lab on the same site, became fully functional last month, after 18 months of planning and construction. It will have a maximum capacity of 6MW, according to the firm.

It represents a strategic move by GM, which filed for bankruptcy last week and is in the process of reforming as a smaller company with significant government ownership. Bolstering its presence in battery research will help to prepare it for the plug-in hybrid vehicles that it wants to launch. It has maintained its commitment to ship the Chevy Volt plugin hybrid in 2010.

The lab is equipped to test for real-world driving patterns, hot and cold temperatures, and calendar life, according to the company, which added that more than half the lab is devoted to testing electrochemical battery cells and their enclosures – a facility that its previous lab did not have. It will also include a thermal shaker table to test the structural integrity of the battery modules.