General Motors plans to begin making large storage batteries, the company said Tuesday, joining Tesla, Ford Motor and other carmakers in pushing into a growing market and compensating for slower sales of electric vehicles in the United States.
The batteries, which can be the size of shipping containers, store excess energy from solar panels, wind turbines and other power sources. Utilities, data centers and other big energy consumers use them for backup power or to manage fluctuations in electricity supply or demand.
Tesla has been selling storage batteries since 2015. Ford Motor said last year it would convert a factory in Kentucky to make large batteries, after shutting down production of electric vehicle batteries at the plant because car sales fell short of expectations.
Making storage batteries, which Tesla and other companies also make in smaller sizes for homes, could help automakers get a better return on the investments they have made in battery factories.
G.M. and other U.S. carmakers have scaled back production of electric vehicles after Congress last year eliminated tax incentives that could be worth up to $7,500. Sales slumped, forcing G.M., Ford, Stellantis and Honda to report billions of dollars in losses from electric vehicle investments that now won’t pay off.
At the same time, most automobile executives expect electric vehicles to gradually replace vehicles that run on gasoline or diesel. Sales of battery-powered models are surging in much of the rest of the world because of rising fuel prices caused by the Iran war.
“We believe that E.V.’s are the future,” Mary Barra, the chief executive of G.M., said in an interview last week with NBC Nightly News, adding that the pace of change would be set by car buyers.
G.M. plans to produce large batteries whose main active ingredient is sodium, a different approach than Ford or Tesla. Sodium, often derived from soda ash, is much cheaper and easier to process than lithium, the main ingredient in most storage and electric vehicle batteries. Sodium-ion batteries also do not require elaborate cooling and heating systems to operate safely and efficiently.
“In this market, it’s all about cost,” Kurt Kelty, a G.M. vice president who oversees its battery business, said in an interview.
But the technology needs to be refined and will not be ready for mass production until 2028, Mr. Kelty said. G.M., which is working with Peak Energy, a maker of sodium-ion storage systems based in the San Francisco Bay Area, has not decided where it will manufacture the batteries, he said.
Sodium-ion batteries are too large and heavy for use in most vehicles, but that could change in four or five years as the technology improves, Mr. Kelty said. “We’re at the very beginning stages of sodium ion, like how much it can drop in cost and how much the performance can improve.”
G.M. also said it would issue software updates to allow some of its electric vehicles to be used to send power to electric grids. Owners of electric Chevrolets, including the Silverado pickup or Equinox and Blazer sport utility vehicles, as well as several Cadillac models, would be able to earn money by allowing electric utilities to draw power from the cars and trucks when they are plugged into home chargers.
G.M. has already sold about 250,000 vehicles capable of that feature, the company said.
The technology “ultimately, over time, will put money in the back of the pockets of our customers,” Wade Sheffer, vice president of G.M. Energy, said. On Tuesday he called on utility companies to take advantage of the growing number of vehicles that can be used by energy providers to balance the supply and demand of electricity.
Tesla also offers a vehicle-to-grid feature on its Cybertruck pickup and Ford’s F-150 Lightning pickup has similar capabilities. But U.S. electric utilities, which tend to be slow to embrace new technology, have run only small pilot projects to test the use of electric vehicles in this way.
G.M. also said Tuesday that it is updating its electric vehicle software to make it easier for drivers to use public charging stations. Drivers should no longer need to use apps on their phones to start a charging session at many stations, including those operated by Tesla. They can simply plug their cars into compatible stations and walk away.
The overall goal is to make electric vehicle ownership more affordable and more convenient, Mr. Kelty said. Range, cost and charging “are the big three things that are always issues with E.V.’s,” he said. “That’s really what we’re going after.”
