GM Ventures has invested $10 million in materials science company Forge Nano, which makes Atomic Armor, an innovative EV battery technology.
GM and Forge Nano
Capital investment into Forge Nano now exceeds $100 million; GM joins Volkswagen, LG, Hanwha, and Mitsui Kinzoku as shareholders.
GM and Forge Nano have also signed a strategic partnership agreement to use Forge Nano’s proprietary Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology, Atomic Armor, to develop thin-film coatings to enhance GM’s cathode active materials. Forge Nano will build prototype lithium-ion battery cells at its Colorado headquarters to improve GM’s EV battery performance and lifespan.
Atomic Armor is a surface coating that, when applied to an EV battery, prevents corrosion, strengthens properties, and improves performance. It results in a 20% increase in range and gives the EV battery the ability to fast charge in 10 minutes.
Forge Nano says it plans to use the money to continue to expand its battery material coating business, which includes in-house active material coating services, external equipment sales, and production of Atomic Armor-powered battery cells. It will also expand its footprint in semiconductors.
Forge Battery
Forge Battery is Forge Nano’s manufacturing business, which I visited at the end of September on a press trip arranged by the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina to the state’s Battery Belt.
Forge Battery is currently fitting out a 277,000-square-foot space (pictured above) that it’s leased in Morrisville, North Carolina, where it will manufacture ALD-enabled, high-performance (307 Wh/kg) NMC/Si-G 21700 Li-ion cells. (Forge Battery also has a newly constructed gigafactory in Raleigh, where it’s begun to produce and ship 300 Wh/kg Atomic Armor-powered lithium-ion prototype cells.)
Forge Battery told us its target market includes heavy trucking, offroad vehicles, motorcycles, and defense.
The Morrisville site will have a 1 GWh per year production capability underway in 2026 and will grow to 3 GWh per year by 2029 once it gets the power it needs from utility Duke Energy. Forge Battery’s supply chain will initially be 90% US-sourced, with the goal of a 100% US supply chain by project completion. (The 10% isn’t yet made in the US; that’s sourced from South Korea.)
The US Department of Energy recently awarded Forge Battery $100 million as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and it will use that money to expand its production capacity to 3 GWh/year. When we visited the vast space, which will be made even larger with the new funding, preparations were underway for a press conference the next day where Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC) and US Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm were going to announce the funding officially.
That event had to be canceled due to Hurricane Helene’s impending arrival. We all left early, and at the time, none of us knew how devastating the damage would be to the western part of the state.
Read more: Forge Battery says its 21700 EV batteries fast charge in 10 minutes
Electrek’s Take
When people ask what the Biden administration has been up to over the last few years, Forge Battery is a great example of the mind-blowing domestic clean energy and EV growth the federal government (and the state of North Carolina) is supporting. It’s mind-boggling to think that all of this has happened in just a few short years. Good policy gets real-world results, and it was great to see it in person.
Forge Nano and Forge Battery are creating better-performing EV batteries. These should encourage more people to adopt EVs. They’re also creating direct and indirect jobs in North Carolina and elsewhere. And most importantly, the product they build encourages people to stop burning fossil fuels that warm the earth with emissions and create ever more intense hurricanes like Helene that devastate communities and lives.
If you are in a position to help, the state’s North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund is accepting donations to support the communities most impacted.
