July 29, 2021: Tony Modafferi, well known throughout the battery industry for his leadership in setting up GM’s Global Battery Systems Lab in Michigan, has announced he will retire on July 31.
“After almost 38 years at GM it’s time to move on to the next step in this journey we call life,” he said in an email to his colleagues and friends.
“It’s been an incredible 38 years and I’ve seen the auto industry transform from carburettors and distributors to fuel injection and coil on plug, and now to full electric vehicles. When I started at GM, I worked for Buick Motor Division as a calibration engineer. I would never have guessed that 38 years later we would be building electric vehicles (my lack of vision, I guess!).”
Modafferi was a key figure in setting up GM’s global battery lab, the largest facility in the US at the time. The lab can test all current battery systems and energy storage technologies for the motor company’s electric, plug-in, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles.
Modafferi’s passion for cars stems back to his childhood, when he would spend hours with his father working on the older cars his family could afford.
A New Yorker, he earned his degrees in engineering at Stony Brook University, on Long Island, before taking a job as structural engineer for a New York company that designed and built nuclear plants.
It was then that a friend got him a job in Detroit for Ford Motor Company. “It seemed perfect, because all I really wanted to do was work on cars,” he said.
Within seven years he had made it to lead calibration engineer on a truck model at a time when automotive engineering was being transformed after two OPAC oil embargoes had sent fuel prices sky high.
Fuel economy was becoming more and more important — and he says that in some ways, today’s transition to electric is similar, a technological evolution.
Move to GM
Modafferi took his first step in what would be a 38-year hike in General Motors in 1986, when he took a job as a calibration engineer for Buick. Within a year, he was running a lab dedicated to traditional power trains and components.
In 1995, Modafferi was assigned to work in China — a country with which GM had struck viable partnerships and with whom it wanted to expand.
“I was the programme manager for power trains on the China E6 programme, which was our first shot at building a vehicle, engine and transmission in China,” he says.
Modafferi actually moved to China in 1999 after travelling back and forth for four years.
Soon an entire Buick vehicle and power train plant had been built, and Chinese-made Buicks began rolling off the production line.
Overcoming cultural differences were a slight challenge, but Modafferi had a great respect for the people he worked with and ultimately his team of 85 people ran a 24/7 laboratory, calibrating vehicles and testing durability.
“I worked with some of the most creative, innovated, hardworking and dedicated people I have ever met,” he says. “Living and working in China was an amazing experience. But there was really no thought of battery powered vehicles.” That didn’t happen until 2007.
Modafferi moved back to the US in 2003, to Detroit. His first assignment was to run another power train laboratory.
GM was going through a tough time, haemorrhaging money, closing plants, shedding workers and heading towards bankruptcy.
Behind the scenes, however, leaders realized that hybrid and electric programmes just may be the way forward.
“They knew they needed to make a shift: either make these cars or give up,” said Modafferi. “There were tense meetings. They asked what we needed in a lab to get the Volt out the door. So we started putting plans together to build a new lab.”
And so they did — finishing the build of the Global Battery Testing Systems Lab nine months ahead of schedule, in January 2009, and fully functional in May.
Half of the 33,000sqft (3,000m2) area was dedicated to testing electrochemical battery cells and their modules, which hadn’t been available in GM’s previous battery lab.
The rest of the floor space evaluated completed battery packs.
The lab allowed for procedures not previously possible, like a thermal shaker table for battery structural integrity testing, and a battery teardown area for failure analysis and competitor benchmarking.
Equipment and test automation systems in the lab was also integrated with labs in Germany and China so they could exchange data seamlessly and share work.
“We designed this as a ‘global lab’ with the intent of duplicating the software and equipment in the three locations,” Modafferi said.
“This gives us the ability to test products produced in Asia right in the area — and around the globe. The idea was to facilitate a broad portfolio of supplier partners.”
In 2010, the size of the Global Battery Systems Lab was doubled, adding capability in another six areas of testing.
Fast forward to 2020 and it has increased again, to 100,000 sqft (9,290m2), with 40 battery testing stations and 18 climate chambers along with a host of other modern equipment and testing procedures.
“Having the opportunity to design, build, staff and manage the battery lab exceeded all my expectations, far exceeding the China assignment,” said Modafferi, who when his China assignment had finished, said similar things about that.
“Most importantly working on building the battery lab gave me the opportunity to work with, and learn from, an incredible, diverse team that made this lab the best in the world.”
“Tony will be much missed in the industry,” says Laura Schacht, who worked closely with him for several years. “He was widely respected as a very talented personable man but also he was a humble and gentle person.”
