GM's $1 Billion LMR Plan Rests on One Unaudited 33 Percent Claim

General Motors and LG Energy Solution will spend $1 billion converting their Ultium Cells plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, to make prismatic lithium manganese-rich cells, with the work finishing in 2028 and the first vehicle using them arriving the same year. GM says the chemistry holds 33 percent more energy than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) at a comparable cost.

Both numbers are vendor claims, and the second one carries most of the weight. Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson told the J.P. Morgan U.S. All Stars Conference the week before the Sept. 29 announcement that the first big step in cutting EV costs "will be in '28 when we start to produce the LMR technology," which he described as "premium and power load at the same cost as LFP," according to GM Authority.

What the $1 billion buys at Spring Hill

Electrek reports that Spring Hill will be the first plant in the world to mass-produce prismatic LMR cells. Construction begins later in 2026, the plant adds 500 jobs on top of a workforce of about 1,200, and GM says the cells will go into electric trucks and full-size SUVs with a target of more than 400 miles of range.

The Next Web puts the announcement in the context of earlier spending: $2.3 billion committed in 2021, $275 million in 2022 and a $900 million pilot line. The pilot line in Warren, Michigan makes about 2,500 cells a day, which is a research quantity. That is a pilot rate, and none of the sources give a plant-scale output in gigawatt-hours.

What 33 percent means for range and cost

The claim compares against LFP, the cheap chemistry, not against the high-nickel cells GM uses now. Energy density is watt-hours per kilogram or per litre; a cell that holds a third more in the same package either extends range or lets the pack shrink. Against LFP the gain is real if it holds. Against today's Silverado EV, which Electrek says carries an estimated 478 miles from a high-nickel pack and starts at $55,895, the LMR target of more than 400 miles sits below that estimate.

1. LFP cell100 index
2. GM LMR cell (vendor claim)133 index

Source: GM claim of 33 percent over LFP, as reported by Electrek, accessed 2026-09-29

The number that matters here is cost per kilowatt-hour at the pack, and GM has not published one. Jacobson said only that the saving will be "thousands of dollars per vehicle at the pack level for new EVs." That is a range with no denominator: thousands on a Silverado pack, which is large, is a smaller share than thousands on a compact car.

What is still unproven

LG research cited by The Next Web puts one LMR cell at 92.2 percent capacity retention after 883 cycles. That is a single laboratory result from a supplier that is also GM's investment partner. It says nothing about a cell built at plant volume, and none of the sources cited here report a calendar-life or cold-weather result.

The schedule is tight, and schedules in this sector slip. Amazon's Greenwood, Indiana plant also opens by 2028, with 300 jobs against Spring Hill's 500, and Tesla has moved its Roadster flying demo five times since 2025. Jacobson called 2027 a "flat spot" for EV development, which puts the whole return on a plant that will not finish until 2028. GM and LG unveiled the chemistry in May 2025, so the road from reveal to first vehicle is about three years, a normal interval for a new cell but one in which every quarter of delay shifts the launch into a market that has moved.

What would change this read is a cell-level price or a yield figure from Spring Hill's first production line. The plant's upgrade work starts in late 2026; the first number worth taking seriously arrives when cells leave it.