Three years to the day after unveiling the Chevrolet Volt concept car, General Motors has started building the battery packs that will power the range-extended electric car – which may cost less than expected.

The first of the thousands of 16-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery packs the General will need for the cars rolled off the assembly line today. The packs, which use more than 200 cells apiece, are being assembled Detroit, making GM the first automaker to make lithium-ion packs in the United States.

"This is an important milestone for GM and a critical step in bringing the Chevrolet Volt to market," said company chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre.

The Volt is slated to roll off an assembly line in Detroit by the end of the year, and for the first time GM said the car may carry a sticker price less than the $40,000 everyone's expected it to cost.

General Motors has never said what the Volt might cost, but the company is widely expected to be doing everything it can to keep the price tag under 40 grand. Jon Lauckner, GM's head of global program management and the guy in charge of getting the Volt built, said the car could come in "notably lower" than that, according to Dow Jones.

"We have until this summer to figure that out," Lauckner said at the ceremony marking the start of battery production.

Yes, a price north of $30,000 – even after the $7,500 federal electric-vehicle tax credit – is steep. But batteries are expensive, and the pack in the Volt is no exception. General Motors, like every other automaker developing electric cars, refuses to disclose the cost of the pack, but most EV experts say lithium-ion packs run $500 to $1,000 per kilowatt-hour.

The packs in the Volt are being manufactured at the Brownstown Battery Pack Assembly Plant in Brownstown Township outside Detroit. General Motors spent $43 million and five months retooling the plant. It sits on a 375-acre site in an industrial park near two airports, where the lithium-ion cells would arrive from Korea. The cells will be assembled into the 400-pound T-shaped pack that will power the Volt, then sent up Interstate 75 to the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant where the range-extended electric car will be built.

The first packs are being built to make sure the manufacturing equipment is set up correctly. Once finished, they'll be used for testing. Production of packs for cars we'll see in showrooms will begin this spring.

General Motors is investing $700 million in eight factories throughout Michigan that will contribute components to the Volt and assemble the car. The company also has spent $25 million on a 33,000-square-foot Global Battery Systems Lab. The lab will develop and test the drivetrains underpinning the Chevrolet Volt and other hybrid, battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The automaker believes the facility, at its sprawling Warren Technical Center campus outside Detroit, will help make it a market leader in battery and EV technology.

The Department of Energy awarded $106 million in grants in August to help refurbish the Brownstown factory under its $2.4 billion package to spur development of next-generation batteries and electric vehicles in the United States. That's on top of the $266 million the feds have invested to support development of the Volt, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.

"We urgently need to change how we power cars and trucks," Chu said, according to Reuters. Chu, who attended the opening at Brownstown, said 99 percent of batteries currently used in hybrids are manufactured in Japan.

Photo and video: General Motors

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GM sent along some time-lapse video of the first pack being wheeled around the Brownstown plant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOsCpuWcV0g