GM Drops Ultium EV Branding

General Motors is gearing up to discontinue the Ultium branding for its EV batteries and related components, reports CNBC.

The components themselves will remain unchanged, but the Ultium name will fade away except for production operations like the Ultium Cells LLC battery joint venture with LG.

“As GM continues to expand its EV business, the company is no longer branding its electric vehicle architecture, battery cells, or EV components with the Ultium name, starting in North America,” the automaker said in a statement to CNBC.

GM announced Ultium in 2020, aiming to achieve economies of scale for a wide variety of EV models by utilizing common motor and battery families. While this requires similar vehicle architectures to house the components, the battery cells and motors are the true points of commonality, differing somewhat from the typical platform-focused approach that uses basic elements of the chassis as a starting point for different models.

Since then, GM has implemented the Ultium strategy with EVs for three out of four of its U.S. brands, plus the BrightDrop electric vans (now part of Chevrolet). The odd one out, Buick, is expected to get its own Ultium-based models soon as well. Ultium components were also to be used for the cancelled Cruise Origin self-driving car.

Now, GM is rethinking its EV plans in light of slower-than-expected demand. In recent months, the automaker has stepped back from a previous goal of achieving production capacity for one million EVs by 2025, citing an underdeveloped EV market, and has discussed reintroducing hybrids. CEO Mary Barra stated last month that she was surprised by how political EVs had become, but added that the automaker was still preparing to eliminate tailpipes from its light-duty vehicles by 2035 (as announced in 2021), as long as customers were ready.