First is that advanced batteries and electric vehicles are not the product of government policy.  They are the product of fundamental changes in energy and automotive technologies that will continue regardless of political leadership.  Government policy cannot affect the existence of this change (though it can affect its pace).  Politics will not prevent the adoption of a superior technology by U.S. businesses and consumers.  As long as we in industry keep our eye on the ball, no change in government policy will cripple our industry.  And the ball is: better, cheaper, faster.

Second, there is a difference between politics and policy.  Modern EV’s, which are still a new and relatively expensive technology, make a great punching bag for a political coalition marketing itself to hard-pressed blue-collar workers.  My guess is that Henry Ford took political heat in the early 20^th Century from politicians representing the vast majority of U.S. voters, who could not yet afford his products.  But Henry Ford got his costs down and ended up doing just fine.

Third, a new approach to some of the challenges of the advanced battery industry in the United States might prove refreshing, and perhaps even beneficial.  Everyone who runs a business appreciates the prime importance of efficiency.  A new focus on efficiency could be beneficial to all good businesses in our industry.

Focusing on the fundamental needs of business in the battery industry could be even more beneficial.  As I have long observed, every business has two problems: a balance sheet problem and an income statement problem.  Over the last four years the federal government has provided necessary and invaluable assistance to many of our members in solving their balance sheet problem.  If the next Administration chooses to focus more on the income statement problem, our industry could benefit as well.

Finally, China.  I have written previously in this blog that we need a new approach to China.  What that approach needs to be and what issues that approach needs to cover go well beyond batteries.  While I will not weigh in on the wisdom of across the board tariffs on everything made in China (and everywhere else), it strikes me that a deal needs to be cut with the Chinese.   Because of the peculiarities of U.S. politics, it needed to be Nixon who went to China.  McGovern could never have done it.  So let’s see what happens in 2025.

I do not wish to discount the apprehension in our industry or to be overly Pollyannaish.  The advanced battery industry received unprecedented moral and financial support over the last four years, which it badly needed.  It may be that we will not have that level of support over the next two to four years.  But the future is far from bleak.  We have a strong technology wind at our back.  The best days of the advanced battery, EV and renewable energy industries lay before us, not behind.  Let’s just keep charging ahead.

Ralph’s resume reads like a laundry list of positions and accomplishments.  He was a past President of the Electrochemical Society. He was an advisor to most of the national laboratories working on advanced battery technology.  He published more than 110 articles and was awarded five patents.  And that barely scratches the surface.  Yet he was also one of the kindest, most decent and most humble men you could ever hope to meet.

Ralph’s most enduring impact on U.S. industry grew out of his article “Factors Affecting U.S. Production Decisions: Why Are There No Volume Lithium-Ion Battery Manufactures in the United States?” published in December 2006.  In that article, Ralph was the first to sound the alarm about the loss of lithium-ion battery manufacturing capability in the United States and the long-term consequences of that loss.

Over the past few years, federal and state governments have made unprecedented investments in electric vehicles and supply chain projects to try to help U.S. manufacturers and U.S. workers regain the lead in lithium-ion battery manufacturing. The revised Section 30D tax credit will inject about $7.5 billion of investment into U.S.-made electric vehicles.  The Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit should generate tax credits of about $30.6 billion to U.S. manufacturers through 2031.  An additional $13.8 billion of subsidies has been awarded by states and localities to at least 51 electric vehicle and lithium-ion battery plants.  Every single one of those investments can trace its origin to Ralph Brodd and his 2006 article.

I first met Ralph in 2007.  It was Ralph who convinced me to found NAATBatt in order to address the looming crisis of lithium battery technology in the United States.  That effort in turn caught the attention of a first-term Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.  The rest is history.

Now Ralph belongs to history.  He had more impact on it than many realize.  Our sincere condolences to Dorothy and to the rest of the Brodd family.  Ralph will be sorely missed.

The elephant in the room, of course, is how do you make that happen?  The even bigger elephant is how do you ensure that the batteries that power those vehicles will be made in the United States?

The White House announcement outlines four approaches:

• Installing the first-ever national network of electric vehicle charging stations.
• Delivering point-of-sale consumer incentives to spur U.S. manufacturing and union jobs.
• Financing the retooling and expansion of the full domestic manufacturing supply chain.
• Innovating the next generation of clean technologies to maintain our competitive edge.

All four approaches will be helpful.  Installing vehicle charging stations will make electric vehicles more attractive to consumers by reducing range anxiety.  This approach seems to have political support, as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal which seems to be working its way through Congress includes $7.5 billion in funding for this purpose.

Supporting innovation and the retooling of the full domestic manufacturing supply chain (presumably with government grants and loans) will also be helpful. But this approach risks falling into the ARRA trap of 2009-10, which invested a lot of public money into infrastructure that the market did not ultimately support.

The single most important thing the federal government can do to ensure U.S. leadership in critical advanced battery technology is to make sure that there is a vibrant, early market for that technology in the United States.  For all the hand-wringing about Chinese leadership in battery manufacturing, it is worthwhile remembering that the Chinese did not get that leadership because they out-innovated or out-smarted the United States.  The Chinese got and continue to hold that leadership because the Chinese government made sure that there was a vibrant, early market for advanced battery technology in China that only Chinese manufacturers could reliably access.

If the United States wants to gain leadership in advanced battery technology and manufacturing, it simply needs to do what the Chinese have done in China.  There is no magic or complexity to the formula for success.

Unfortunately, incenting consumer purchases of electric vehicles and other advanced battery-powered technologies (approach #2 of the Biden Administration, summarized above) is the most politically problematic of all the approaches.  American consumers are still largely skeptical of electric vehicle technology and the whole subject of vehicle electrification has become unfortunately politicized.  As a consequence, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal does not contain any meaningful consumer incentives for electric vehicle procurement.

While it may be easy to blame Congress for failing to seize an opportunity, the reality is that Congress cannot get much ahead of its constituents.  It falls to the battery industry, not Congress or the Administration, to explain to the American public why battery technology will be so important to their future and why buying advanced battery-powered technologies today is practical and makes sense.  We as an industry need to re-double our public outreach efforts in the year ahead if we want to make meaningful consumer incentives for U.S.-made advanced batteries a reality.

For me, the most noteworthy content was not the technical detail of where Tesla is going with its battery technology.  The move to tabless 4860 cells, more silicon, less cobalt, away from solid state technology (apparently), and the road map to a 56% reduction in battery costs were all very interesting topics, if not entirely novel.

For me the most interesting take-away from Battery Day was that Tesla now apparently sees itself as a battery company rather than a car company.  Car sales may drive its revenue growth.  But Tesla recognizes that reducing battery costs is the key to increasing vehicle-driven revenue growth and that efficiently manufacturing of battery cells at very large scale is the key to reducing battery costs.

This, of course, is what NAATBatt has been saying for 10 years.  He who makes the batteries will one day make the cars.

The big news about Tesla from Battery Day is that, having recognized efficient battery cell manufacturing as the principal challenge of its business, Tesla has decided to address that challenge directly and manufacture battery cells itself.  This decision stands in contrast to so many of its automotive OEM competitors, who, seeing the same fundamental challenge to their businesses, have elected to outsource the problem to third party contractors.

Lithium-ion battery cells will be one of the most important technologies of the 21^st Century.  Batteries will power the myriad of devices that run on electric energy unattached to the grid.  Those devices are what will make the 21^st Century fundamentally different than the 20^th Century.  The spin off opportunities and supply chain linkages that lithium-ion battery manufacturing will provide make it no less strategic from the standpoint of economic development than AI or 5G.  Companies and countries that do not to compete in lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing will miss huge opportunities for job and wealth creation in the coming century.

The challenge that Tesla has decided to undertake in manufacturing lithium-ion batteries at scale is daunting.  Success is in no way guaranteed.  Tesla’s core competence is not electrochemistry.  It is unclear how much know-how Tesla has actually acquired from Panasonic since it started manufacturing battery cells at the Nevada Gigafactory in 2016.  Manufacturing lithium-ion battery cells at mass scale is an extraordinarily complex business.  But Tesla can take some comfort from the fact that CATL in China went effectively from nothing to being the largest lithium-ion battery company in the world in little more than five years.

NAATBatt has been calling for years for the creation of lithium-ion battery manufacturing champions in North America.  Domestic champions are critical to the development of a robust domestic supply chain for lithium-ion technology.  They are also critical to the continued support of lithium-ion R&D in the United States, a traditional strength of the American research institutions that may be waning.

The question is whether Tesla is up to the challenge of being a national champion.  To date Tesla has been extraordinarily successful in moving its stock price to eye-popping levels.  It has mastered the game of being a Silicon Valley start-up.  If that is its only goal, it may continue to know that kind of success for a while.

I hope that Tesla’s ambitions, and Elon Musk’s vision of his legacy, are bigger than that.  North America needs a champion in lithium-ion technology.  It needs a champion that can help create jobs and economic opportunities at the hundreds of other companies that will be benefit if lithium-ion battery manufacturing can find a vibrant home in North America.  This no small thing.

To become the lithium-ion battery manufacturing technology champion of North America, Tesla need to step up from being an introverted start-up and focus on a larger social and economic development role.  This would be a change but not a novel transition for a successful, industry-leading business.  Companies such as General Motors and McDonalds did the same sort of thing during the 20^th Century.  It will be interesting to see whether Tesla has the appetite to do the same.