A stunning number of electric vehicle, battery factories are being canceled

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post, via MSN

A stunning number of electric vehicle, battery factories are being canceled

Story by Shannon Osaka • 3h • 4 min read

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A stunning number of electric vehicle, battery factories are being canceled
© Nic Antaya/For The Washington Post

Over the past few years, electric vehicle manufacturing facilities producing lithium batteries, car parts and critical minerals sprang up all over the United States. Drawing on cash and tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, these factories promised to provide jobs — largely in Republican areas — and to set the nation on a path to making homegrown EVs.

But even before President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports, many of those projects were being canceled — leaving thousands of jobs and the shift to clean energy in doubt. ... According to data from Atlas Public Policy, a policy research group, more projects were canceled in the first quarter of 2025 than in the previous two years combined. Those cancellations include a $1 billion factory in Georgia that would have made thermal barriers for batteries and a $1.2 billion lithium-ion battery factory in Arizona.

“It’s hard at the moment to be a manufacturer in the U.S. given uncertainties on tariffs, tax credits and regulations,” said Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy. Hundreds of millions of dollars in additional investments appear to be stalled, he added, but haven’t been formally canceled yet.

“Nothing is more important to business than market clarity,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a clean energy advocacy group. “It’s about as clear as a blizzard at midnight.”

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Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-stunning-number-of-electric-vehicle-battery-factories-are-being-canceled/ar-AA1ChG3s

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Original article, behind paywall:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/03/ev-factories-canceled/

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Therefore fair to ask why we need minerals from Greenland and Ukraine? /nt

[Blackjackdavey]

4. The new oil

Because they have rightly realized those minerals are the new oil and depressing demand while you're in the process of monopolizing the supply probably makes it cheaper. Cheaper still if you monopolize the supply with the use of someone else's tax dollars and resources. Cheaper even still if you can bank bribes from petrochemical companies in the meantime. That's my guess anyway.

[Bluetus]

6. The chemistry is in flux

First, there is very little lithium in "lithium batteries".

Different chemistries are being used as "semi-solid-state batteries" enter production. And ultimately, it appears that a majority of the vehicle and stationary storage market can be met with no lithium at all -- using sodium-based chemistries.

Cobalt and graphite are as in-demand as lithium.

[Blackjackdavey]

10. Interesting

But i don't know what it means within this context. The mineral deposits in question are lithium only and therefore not that important? Mineral deposits for battery production isn't that important? Or all three or one or the other are available within these deposits and they are important?

[Bluetus]

15. It means that sodium is plentiful.

Sodium ion batteries will never have the energy density that is possible with lithium because sodium is a much heavier atom. However with the improvements that are happening in the holistic battery design, it looks like sodium ion batteries will be able to replace lithium in most applications eventually.

There will still be some materials in short supply, but it is not necessarily the same elements that are in demand today.

[Bengus81]

14. Have you read about Sodium ION? Interesting read

[Bluetus]

16. Yes. Things are moving very quickly.

But because United States policy has been dominated by billionaires and fossil fuel corporations, the United States is simply not a player in new energy.

I know that Biden tried his best to move that forward, and did achieve some steps forward. But we are overwhelmed by this guided corporations with way too much power. China is kicking our asses. And you cannot fix that with tariffs.

[Bengus81]

17. Yeah...hell Trump doesn't understand basic technology or even care. It's just money

I can't remember if Sodium ION charges faster but I think the charging cycles of those types of battery are endless. Plus sodium is literately everywhere on Earth as opposed to Lithium.

[Bluetus]

19. Sodium and Lithium both have 1 valence electron

So their charging properties should be similar. The main difference is that sodium has much greater atomic weight (I.e. more dead weight for that one productive electron).

However, charging speed depends on many factors. And at the same time CATL, BYD and others are moving to sodium, they are also working toward solid state or semi-solid state packages, and some of those can tolerate a much faster charging rate.

So far, Na-ion batteries should be considered experimental. There are a few EVs in production in China, but they are small city cars with limited range. For the moment, practically all EVs use either NMC (expensive, best range) or LFP (cheaper). It is common to have one model use LFP for lower trim levels and NMC for higher trim levels. By 2030, I expect lower priced cars will be mostly using Na-ion and the higher priced models using lithium, but in a solid state format.

The key thing for Americans to understand is that this is dominated by the CHinese, and to a lesser degree Korea and Japan. Tesla has never been a battery player. They already replied on Panasonic, and more recently have to buy a lot of product from CATL. This is all a direct result of the Limbaugh/Fox/Ailes RW machine that fought every attempt to drive energy leadership in the US. Now we are screwed. China will dominate this area for the rest of anybody's life who is reading this in 2025.

Well done, MAGA people.

[erronis]

11. Good points. The plutocrats exerting leverage to buy cheap.

[Scrivener7]

2. "Largely in republican areas." Good.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. The rest of the world will soon leave the US in the dust, technologically.

[et tu]

5. hey! the brilliant tech bros

will save us

[PortTack]

9. China already has when it come to EVs! much less expensive, much better quality than tesla and charge in 5 min

for a 250 mi trip

[Martin Eden]

18. Also medical research and other scientific fields

The dumbing down of America was apparent when Trump was elected. Both times.

Catastrophic climate events will multiply while Trump has crippled FEMA's ability to respond.

[NNadir]

7. I am simultaneously amused and disgusted to hear the routine asignment of the word...

..."clean" or worse the widely abused word "green" applied to electric cars.

They are only so in the case where electricity is clean or "green," which, in most places, it isn't.

[Martin Eden]

8. Deliberately exacerbating catastrophic climate change

Is about as stupid as it gets. Ultimately, everyone loses.

[NNadir]

20. Electric cars have very little to do with addressing extreme global heating. Where I live, they're worse...

...than internal combustion engines (ICE) for CO₂ when you include the embodied energy:

A paper addressing the idea that electric cars are "green."

I live on the PJM grid, which happens to be the grid referenced in the paper.

[aggiesal]

12. So we are now going to allow China to take the lead on EV's? Wow! n/t

[dalton99a]

13. .