General Motors and LG Energy Solution will produce lithium manganese-rich (LMR) electric vehicle battery cells in Spring Hill, Tennessee, as the two companies extend their US cell manufacturing partnership around a chemistry designed to cut reliance on costly cathode materials.

The announcement names Spring Hill as the production site. The plant already anchors GM's Tennessee EV assembly footprint, and the two companies intend to add LMR cell output there. Neither company has published a tonnage figure, a gigawatt-hour capacity number, or a start-of-production date in the announcement.

What is LMR and why does the material stream matter?

LMR cells shift the cathode mix toward manganese, a commodity far cheaper and more widely available than the nickel and cobalt that dominate current high-energy EV chemistries in North America. For the battery materials market, that shift touches several streams at once:

• Cathode active material demand tilts from nickel-heavy NMC and NCA recipes toward manganese-rich formulations.
• Manganese sulfate supply chains, today largely anchored in China and South Africa, gain a new US demand signal.
• Cobalt exposure, already in structural decline in Western cell designs, loses another potential offtake.

GM and LG have not disclosed the LMR energy density targets, cycle-life specifications, or which vehicle programs will take the Spring Hill cells first.

Built capacity versus announced project

The Spring Hill commitment sits in the announced-project category, not built capacity. GM and LG Energy Solution already operate joint cell plants in the United States through their Ultium Cells joint venture, which supplies GM's EV assembly plants. The LMR plan layers a new chemistry onto that existing manufacturing relationship rather than standing up a separately named venture in the announcement.

For scrap generators and battery recyclers, the practical takeaway is sequencing: LMR cells entering US production eventually mean LMR-bearing production scrap and end-of-life packs entering the recycling feedstock mix. That changes black mass composition over time, with manganese fractions rising and nickel fractions diluted relative to today's NMC-heavy scrap.

Recyclers and hydrometallurgical operators planning recovery flowsheets around high-nickel black mass will need to price in a manganese-rich input stream as LMR volumes scale. No US recycler has announced an LMR-specific process change tied to the GM-LG plan to date.

Why the chemistry choice carries cost weight

GM's push toward LMR tracks a broader industry logic: cut the battery bill by substituting cheap manganese for expensive nickel. The companies said they intend to produce LMR cells in Spring Hill, signaling that the automaker wants a lower-cost cell chemistry inside its US manufacturing base rather than importing it from overseas suppliers.

The announcement does not include:

• An investment figure in dollars.
• A cell capacity target in GWh per year.
• A hiring or headcount commitment.
• A firm start-of-production date.

Those gaps define what to watch next. Trade press coverage of US battery plants has consistently shown that cost-per-kilowatt-hour competitiveness, not headline capacity, decides which chemistry wins volume, and LMR's entry into a GM plant gives the manganese-rich chemistry its highest-profile US validation to date.

What decides what happens next

The milestone that moves this story from announcement to capacity is a start-of-production date at Spring Hill, paired with disclosed volumes and named vehicle programs. Until then, LMR remains a commitment with a deadline to track, not tonnage on the ground.

Watch for GM and LG to publish capacity and timing details, for manganese sulfate offtake agreements to surface behind the cell output plan, and for the first LMR production scrap to reach US recycling contracts. Each of those filings and disclosures will mark the point where a manganese-heavy battery stream becomes a measurable part of the North American materials loop.