GM’s readying its Ultium batteries for use in what many might call the ultimate electric vehicle: the lunar rover its building in tandem with partner Lockheed Martin.
The company said it plans to begin testing them in space later his year with a target of full use in 2025. Officials aren’t limiting their use to NASA, instead are looking to work with Blue Origin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ private space company, as well as SpaceX, owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
“The interest around the world is tremendous,” said Derek Hodgins, Lockheed Martin’s director of product strategy and sales for lunar infrastructure services, during a joint event at the GM Proving Grounds reported CNBC.com.
Going to the moon again
About a year ago, GM announced plans to work with Lockheed Martin to build a lunar rover for the Apollo 15 mission to the moon in 2025. The companies are developing a “lunar terrain vehicle,” or LTV, for uses by NASA’s Artemis program.
The goal is to design and build a vehicle allowing astronauts explore more of the moon’s surface “than ever before,” according to GM officials. The LTV is just the first of several types of vehicles needed to help get astronauts across the moon’s surface.
GM’s done this before, aiding NASA in the development of the agency’s Apollo Moon program. It developed, tested, integrated and produced the inertial guidance and navigation systems for the series, in particular Apollo that put astronauts on the moon for the first time in 1969.
Additionally, it helped to develop the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) for Apollo 15-17. The all-electric LRV never drove farther away from NASA’s based than 4.7 miles during its time on the moon’s surface. Fortunately, GM’s electric vehicle technology has advanced substantially since then.
Building a better buggy
The new vehicles aim to travel “significantly farther distances,” including the moon’s South Pole, which is cold and dark with severely rugged terrain. Not only does it need to go farther, apparently faster is on the list of must-haves as well, with officials noting it will travel as fast as 12 mph — nearly double the 7 mph of the aforementioned LRV.
The vehicles will also need to be able to haul plenty of equipment in addition to people. NASA, according to reports, is looking for a vehicle to be able to travel about 600 miles on a charge and about 6,000 miles in a 42-day period. They also need to be able to operate autonomously, according to reports.
The GMC Hummer SUT played a role in the new LTV’s development, enduring some extreme winter testing to provide company’s engineers some much-needed insight into how their current battery technology will fare in the far-colder reaches of space, as well as system controls and torque management.
“It’s moon dust, but there are also craters, rocks and other things you’re going to have to navigate,” Drew Mitchell, vehicle dynamics performance engineer for Hummer told CNBC.com.
So cool!