First Tesla, then Ford, and now GM \u2014\u00a0it seems every automaker wants a slice of the energy storage market.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to see why. While EV sales have stagnated in the United States, sales of large, stationary batteries have doubled in the past two years. And they show no signs of stopping.<\/p>\n
Despite incentives being gutted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Solar Energy Industries Association expects annual installations to exceed 110 GWh per year by 2030, about double what they are today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of potential for this market,\u201d Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery and sustainability at GM, told TechCrunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GM has dabbled in energy storage before, but on Tuesday it took a bigger swing, rolling out an entirely new sodium-ion battery chemistry that\u2019s aimed at the heart of the market.<\/p>\n
The skyrocketing energy storage market is being driven higher by the convergence of three trends. The most obvious is the expansion of data centers being built to serve AI. Data center energy demand is expected to nearly triple by the end of the decade. But alongside that growth, entire swathes of the economy, including transportation, manufacturing, and HVAC, are being electrified.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cData centers are a big part of the growth, but even without data centers, it started to really pick up,\u201d Kelty said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just automakers that are diving into energy storage. Startups have been raising large rounds to capture a chunk of the market. Base Power raised a $1 billion Series C in October to expand beyond Texas, while Lunar Energy raised $232 million to sell batteries to homeowners. Others, like Lightship, are pivoting somewhat. The electric RV manufacturer is now selling a mobile battery for job sites and other locations that need temporary power.<\/p>\n
So far, Tesla has taken the lion\u2019s share of the energy storage market. Of the 57 gigawatt-hours installed last year, Tesla was responsible for 82% of those installations. The company\u2019s annual revenue from energy generation and storage has doubled since 2023, largely due to growth in Megapack and Powerwall installations. Tesla\u2019s gross profits for the segment are around 30%, about double what it makes selling EVs and at least three times higher than typical automaker margins. GM\u2019s gross margin over the last 15 years has averaged just over 11%.<\/p>\n
But despite the market\u2019s potential, GM isn\u2019t exactly rushing in. Rather, its first major product, the sodium-ion cells, won\u2019t be ready until later this decade. \u201cWe\u2019re going to develop a family of cells that is appropriate for this market,\u201d Kelty said.<\/p>\n
Kelty and his team point to sodium-ion\u2019s strengths as reason enough for waiting: The materials are cheap and abundant, it doesn\u2019t require an active cooling system, and it can withstand many more charge-discharge cycles than lithium-ion batteries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t hurt that China has yet to corner the market on materials for sodium-ion batteries, like it has with other chemistries. Nearly all of the world\u2019s cobalt is processed by Chinese companies, for example.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives us a path towards supply-chain resilience and low-cost materials,\u201d Andy Oury, business planning manager at GM, told TechCrunch. \u201cSodium-ion is very much in its infancy with the opportunity for the supply chain to grow anywhere people want to invest in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
GM could have taken a path of lesser resistance by simply repackaging the lithium-ion cells it\u2019s currently pumping out at its gigafactories, like Tesla and Ford have done. But the automaker is still bullish on the future of EVs, and it doesn\u2019t want to reassign its lithium-ion manufacturing capacity for fear of being caught flat-footed if there\u2019s a resurgence in the EV market.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to build cells when there\u2019s excess capacity,\u201d Oury said. \u201cIt\u2019s another thing when we return to a high-growth mode and every new battery you want needs a new plant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such a resurgence could be partly under GM\u2019s control. The company is developing an entirely new chemistry, lithium-manganese-rich (LMR), that\u2019s set to debut in 2028. LMR promises to deliver most of today\u2019s range while cutting the cost of a new EV by about 10%. That would bring EVs near parity with fossil fuel vehicles, eliminating one of the main hurdles to adoption.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After LMR, sodium-ion is another chemistry that could disrupt the automotive industry. Chinese automakers have already begun to dabble with it. EVs powered by sodium-ion packs are heavier and have less range, but they\u2019re cheaper and less prone to catching fire. Plus, they have the potential to charge rapidly. Altogether, that makes for an attractive combination for lower-cost EVs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs this the right play for EVs in the long run? That\u2019s yet to be decided,\u201d Kelty said. \u201cIt does give us the advantage that if we want to go that direction, it\u2019ll be very easy for us because we\u2019re going to be right doing a lot of research on this anyway. We\u2019re not ruling it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The risk in moving more deliberately than its competitors, of course, is that the AI bubble bursts, data center construction halts, and GM misses the wave. Paul Menson, director of energy storage commercialization at GM, thinks the bet on sodium-ion will pay off even if that happens. \u201cNo market grows indefinitely forever,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why you have to have the best product. Because if you have the best product, it doesn\u2019t really matter what happens in the market contraction because you still have the best product.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even still, Kelty has a sense of urgency. \u201cWe\u2019re actually exploring other ways to get in the market faster,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re definitely going to try and go as fast as possible.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gm-energy-rendering.jpg?resize=1200,800″] First Tesla, then Ford, and now GM \u2014\u00a0it seems every automaker wants a slice of the energy storage market. It\u2019s easy to see why. While EV sales have stagnated in the United States, sales of large, stationary batteries have doubled in the past two years. And they show no signs of stopping. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,62],"class_list":["post-1986388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-techcrunch-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1986388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1986388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1986388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1986388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}