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Tech Brew

EV Batteries

Jordyn Grzelewski

techbrew.com

Robert Lee, president of North America for South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution, came to an auto industry conference in Detroit this week to talk about the US EV market.

But first, he addressed the elephant in the room: the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on an under-construction EV battery plant in Georgia that’s jointly owned by LGES and Hyundai Motor Group. The operation led to the arrests of 475 workers, mostly South Korean nationals who the US government claims were in the country illegally or under expired or incorrect visas, and 

The incident has strained relations between the US and South Korea at a time when South Korean companies like LGES are investing heavily in the domestic manufacturing revival the Trump administration claims it supports.

“We feel really bad for all of our workers, as well as our subcontractors who came here to do business and install equipment,” Lee said.

The “one positive thing that’s coming out of this,” he added, is the discussion it has spurred about implementing 

 that South Korean officials view as more workable for those coming to the US to help set up high-tech manufacturing operations.

“We’re very supportive of this and cautiously optimistic that this type of thing will not happen again,” Lee said.

The Trump administration has since made moves to contain the fallout from the raid, CNBC 

 Tuesday, with President Trump posting on social media that skilled foreign workers are “welcome” in the US and a top US diplomat offering reassurances that South Korean workers will be able to return to the US without risking similar incidents.

Meanwhile, South Korean officials have said that they are reviewing the incident to assess whether their citizens were subject to human rights violations after ICE agents used chains and shackles and workers reported being detained in poor conditions, The Washington Post 

Experts have warned that the operation, the largest single-site enforcement action in the Department of Homeland Security’s history, could have a chilling effect on foreign investments in the US.

In his remarks Tuesday, Lee highlighted LGES’ investments in the US, which span seven projects across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.

“I think this demonstrates that for at least the battery side, we do believe in US manufacturing,” Lee said. “We’ve invested here and we’re really trying to support this resurgence of high-tech manufacturing here in this country.”

Lee pointed to flat growth in the US EV market in the last year following years of massive growth, and said that while “things are not as good as we thought they were going to be five years ago,” he still expects EV sales to grow at a “modest” pace in the years to come.

Instead of being driven by federal policy, Lee said that EVs must win over consumers by being “faster, cheaper, and better” than their internal combustion engine counterparts.

At the same time, battery makers like LGES are working to help automakers 

, which are major contributors to the cost of EVs overall. Lee cited efforts like LGES’ collaboration with General Motors to bring 

“This is really the most critical activity for us right now, to help our OEM partners get to more competitive vehicles which will, I believe, unleash the market,” he said.

Symbols representing electric vehicles and a red baseball hat. 

LGES exec ‘cautiously optimistic’ battery maker won’t face ICE raids again

LG Energy Solution’s Robert Lee said talks around visa reforms for South Korean workers were the “one positive thing” that came out of an immigration raid on a Georgia battery plant.

Tricia Crimmins

Patrick Kulp

You’re tired of reading about tariffs. Honestly, we’re tired of writing about them. But amid the ever-shifting landscape of 

, and Truth Social missives, where do things stand 

, the Tech Brew team homed in on the ABCs of tech industries—automobiles, batteries, and chips—to illustrate how tariffs are impacting those sectors, the US economy, and your wallet.

? According to Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s ILR School, the situation is “still as messy now as we were when we began.”

“There’s not a lot of clarity,” he told us late last month. “There is no final deal for Mexico. No final deal for Canada. There’s no final deal for China. So everything is still in flux for three of the biggest trading partners we have.”

In April, the Trump administration implemented tariffs of 25% on imported vehicles. Since then, the US has announced trade deals to lower auto tariff rates for several trading partners, including the UK, Japan, South Korea, and the EU.

“It’s really created a lot of confusion—which, if you ask the current administration, they like,” Wheaton said. “They like keeping everybody on their toes, but the auto industry hates uncertainty.”

In an August update on the auto tariffs landscape, Cox Automotive reported that “automakers have theoretically racked up more than $25 billion in tariff obligations so far,” based on “the average imported vehicle being charged roughly $5,200 at the US border.”

Overall, automakers and dealers appear to be absorbing at least some tariff-related costs rather than passing them on to consumers in full, according to Cox.

“But that won’t last,” Erin Keating, executive analyst at Cox, 

. Cox analysts forecast a 4%–8% YoY increase in retail prices by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, auto manufacturers are feeling the effects on their bottom lines, with companies like General Motors, Ford, and Hyundai reporting tariff-related hits to profitability in Q2. The biggest US automakers reported that tariffs hurt their collective profitability to the tune of $11.7 billion in the second quarter, Yahoo Finance 

“The auto industry is clearly under pressure,” Keating wrote. “Tariffs are increasing costs across the board for automakers, dealers, and consumers—not only for new vehicles, but for aftermarket parts and insurance costs.”

Cox analysts expect the average transaction price of a new vehicle in the US to surpass $50,000 this year, and for new-vehicle sales to be lower than in 2024.

And affordability is already a challenge in the auto industry: Yahoo Finance cited Atlanta Fed data indicating that car prices are growing six to eight times faster than household incomes.

Experts have noted that some other recent federal policy changes, like the rollback of vehicle fuel efficiency standards, could be tailwinds for domestic automakers.

“GM, Ford, Stellantis, and others can now make as many pickup trucks and large SUVs as they want,” Wheaton said. “So they’re able to absorb some of those tariffs because they think their profits are going to do better with a different vehicle mix, much worse [mileage] per gallon but higher profit margin.”

In the last few months, it’s felt like tariff uncertainty has taken a backseat to 

 in the green tech industry. But for battery manufacturers—which were able to 

 their 45Y and 48E tax credits—the tariff war has hit hard, forcing them to make tough decisions about where they source their battery cells.

Rithy Chhean, VP of technology at BoxPower, told Tech Brew that “when the price war escalated, [tariffs] became all-consuming” for the company, which produces batteries in addition to solar powered microgrids. While portions of BoxPower’s hardware is domestically produced, the company—like many other battery manufacturers—uses battery cells from China.

“Over the course of three months, it went to almost a 150% tariff,” Chhean said. “We didn’t have special terms in our contracts to say, ‘Here’s the tariff costs, and if the tariffs increase, you have to pay it.’ Some customers were able to deal with it. Some customers, you’re not able to do anything. Someone has to pay that difference.”

BoxPower’s forthcoming LFP battery, the ABX‑110‑BABA, fulfills Build America, Buy America (BABA) requirements, meaning at least 65% of the battery's materials were produced in the US. Even so, Chhean said BoxPower wasn’t able to find any cost-competitive domestic battery cells to use in the product.

“It’s cheaper to get cells from basically another country and pay the tariff costs,” he told us. “Even the companies that say they’re highly domestic, we find out that their cells or modules are also coming from China anyway, or somewhere like China.”

Though the Trump administration claims the goal is to increase “advanced domestic manufacturing capacity” through tariffs, doing so will take time in the battery industry. Critical mineral developers are working together to 

, and battery makers have plans to bring manufacturing plants to the US in the future, but right now companies like BoxPower are in a bind.

At the moment, Chhean said BoxPower uses a “hybrid approach.” The company still buys battery cells from China, but when possible, it buys from companies in other countries that have lower tariffs—even though the cost of the item might be higher. Above all, BoxPower says it’s working to be transparent about tariffs with customers.

“We’re trying to show what the tariff costs are,” Chhean said. “If the tariffs do increase, we will provide a very small markup, if any markup, on it because it’s not really fair to the customer, and we understand that.”

There’s plenty of uncertainty and confusion to go around, too, when it comes to Trump’s moves on 

, which power everything from consumer electronics to advanced AI chips.

 100% tariffs on semiconductors, a possibility his administration has been probing since April. But the announcement also contained a key exemption: Companies that have committed to investing in manufacturing in the US or are already doing so are not subject to the tariffs. The Trump administration has already 

 Apple as one of these companies. Some of the biggest players in the AI infrastructure boom—Nvidia, TSM—–may 

 about the details of these tariffs, which have yet to be formally rolled out. The Semiconductor Industry Association said last month that “we are eager to learn more.”

In such an uncertain environment, Lydia Clougherty Jones, a senior director analyst with Gartner, said companies will likely need to consider multi-country sourcing strategies and stay nimble with scenario planning and analytics.

“It is critical to align technology procurement decisions with the highest-priority disruption-proofing needs, including enabling executive teams to use real-time situational analysis to prepare for future short-term and long-term trade war disruptions,” Clougherty Jones said in an email.

 in running the chipmaking industry itself, most notably by having the US government 

 in Intel. Trump is also directly negotiating fees with Nvidia and AMD to continue selling chips in China, in what legal critics say 

Clougherty Jones said the US government’s more active role in setting industrial policy for the chip sector could ultimately speed AI development—a goal for both the government and the companies involved—but they may also end up at odds over differing motivations.

“Such public-private partnerships prioritize speed, resulting in the acceleration of AI R&D and infrastructure build out, including of data centers, without regulatory guardrails, as governments can selectively remove barriers to AI progress or deprioritize their enforcement,” she said.

“On the other hand, there can be a clash of priorities, as private companies are driven by profit motives and the goal of delivering maximum returns to their shareholders, whereas governments may prioritize advancement of sovereign-specific goals such as national security and strategic AI autonomy, leading to dissimilar drivers and measurements of what successful AI advancement looks like,” she said.

A truck passes by China Shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles, California, on September 1, 2019.

How is tariff uncertainty impacting tech?

We focused on the automotive, battery, and chip industries to tell the tale.

How is tariff uncertainty impacting tech? 

What do good rom-coms and electric vehicle batteries have in common? They’ve got the right chemistry.

To that end, the US auto industry is working to commercialize lithium iron phosphate (LFP), a battery chemistry that’s popular in China, as the sector aims to deliver more affordable EVs.

On Monday, Ultium Cells, a joint venture between General Motors and South Korean battery manufacturer LG Energy Solution, announced plans to upgrade its battery cell manufacturing plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, “to scale production of low-cost lithium iron phosphate battery cells,” according to a news release.

Ultium Cells will start the process of converting battery cell lines at the plant for LFP production later this year, with plans for commercial production to start “by late 2027.” GM plans to incorporate the battery chemistry into its EV lineup alongside nickel-rich batteries, the industry norm today, and 

“At GM, we’re innovating battery technology to deliver the best mix of range, performance, and affordability to our EV customers,” Kurt Kelty, GM’s VP of batteries, propulsion, and sustainability, said in a statement.

Andy Oury, a battery engineer and business planning manager for Kelty, previously told Tech Brew that GM would continue to use nickel-rich batteries for vehicles requiring the longest range, while introducing LFP batteries on entry-level vehicles and LMR batteries “in the middle.”

Another Ultium Cells plant in Warren, Ohio, will continue producing battery cells with nickel cobalt manganese aluminum chemistry, per the release. GM said its goal in introducing LFP battery tech to its EV lineup is to reduce battery pack costs compared to the nickel-rich chemistry it uses in its EVs today.

Lowering battery costs is viewed within the EV sector as crucial to bringing down EV prices.

“By far, the biggest factor that determines the range and cost of an electric car is the battery,” IDTechEx wrote in a January research 

 on LFP batteries. IDTechEx’s research indicates that LFP batteries made up 40% of the global EV market in 2024, and researchers see “a strong opportunity for LFP to continue its growth outside of China,” especially in light of improvements to energy density.

“LFP has a number of advantages over the nickel-rich chemistries that are predominantly used in North America today,” Sam Abuelsamid, VP of market research at Telemetry, told Tech Brew. “The nickel provides for a higher energy density…But nickel cells are much more susceptible to thermal runaway,” which raises the risk of battery fires that are difficult to extinguish.

LFP has lower energy density compared to nickel-rich chemistries, but it’s cheaper, made up of materials that are more readily available, and safer, Abuelsamid said. Despite having lower energy density, he explained, manufacturers can make up the difference by assembling LFP battery packs with more active cell material.

 LFP battery plant in Michigan and licensing technology from Chinese battery maker CATL. The automaker plans to start production on prismatic LFP battery cells and packs next year.

Lisa Drake, Ford’s VP of technology platform programs and EV systems, told reporters during a recent tour of the under-construction facility that Ford executives opted to license the technology rather than continue to invest time and money into their own R&D efforts, in the interest of speed.

“I think in the coming years,” Abuelsamid said, “we will probably see a lot more adoption of LFP in North America just because of its cost advantages and safety advantages compared to nickel cells.”

Image of a person working on an EV battery.

Why automakers like GM and Ford are investing in LFP battery tech

General Motors announced plans to produce LFP EV batteries at a plant in Tennessee.

 that it would build the first automaker-backed lithium iron phosphate EV battery plant in the US was touted as an example of the Inflation Reduction Act’s success.

 amid wrangling over the federal budget in the Republican-controlled Congress. And a House version of the controversial budget bill 

 credits for batteries that use Chinese tech—Ford’s exact model for the plant, per a licensing agreement with Chinese battery giant CATL.

But Ford executives say the company is staying the course on its $3 billion BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, which is now more than halfway complete—even as the project stands to lose major 

, namely the IRA’s 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Tax Credit, which subsidizes investments in domestic battery manufacturing and could represent hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits for Ford.

“When we invest, we stick behind our investments,” Lisa Drake, Ford’s VP of technology platform programs and EV systems, told reporters this week during a tour of the Marshall, Michigan, site. “Ford is a company that will weather the storm until we get there. But there’s a great opportunity to help not only Ford, but all of the auto sector stay in this game and keep these battery jobs here. Now it’s going to just be up to the administration.”

Ford's BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall, Michigan.

Ford broke ground on the plant in early 2023, and is slated to start production on prismatic LFP battery cells and packs next year. The automaker will soon start installing the equipment, now en route from China. Drake confirmed Ford had to pay tariffs on the equipment.

“It’s a long-term play,” she said. “Even with 

, this is still the right thing to do.”

Ford plans to have about 1,700 employees at the plant, which spans 2 million square feet and will have an annual production capacity of 20 gigawatt hours.

Ford is now producing C-sample cells—the final prototype versions—at an offsite “equipment supplier location” and will soon use them for “design-confirmation sign-off in our next-generation electric vehicle program,” according to Drake.

Ford aims to have three battery chemistries in its EV portfolio: nickel manganese cobalt, or NCM, today’s dominant chemistry; LFP, the cheapest option; and the 

The automaker has three other battery plants in the US: two in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, all joint ventures with South Korean battery maker SK On, and all focused on NCM.

Drake said that Ford leaders faced a choice on LFP: continue to pour resources into R&D or license the tech and bring it to market faster.

“It probably would have taken us a decade to catch up and have LFP technology on our own with our own R&D,” she said. “We didn’t have time. And that’s not where you want to spend the investment. If Ford has capital, we want to spend our investment creating the manufacturing jobs here.”

Under its licensing agreement with CATL, Ford controls the equipment, plant, and workforce; CATL employees will train BlueOval Battery Park workers on the equipment.

Though the policy landscape has shifted dramatically, Drake said Ford executives still see this as the right choice, in part because it gives the company more control over its supply chain—but they’re still lobbying for federal support.

“When EV adoption slowed, it just became a huge headwind to us. It’s going to pick up; we believe we’ll ultimately be there by the end of the decade” she said. “In this interim period where that adoption slowed, but we still made this big capital investment, the [production tax credit] will allow us to keep on that path and keep going.”

Workers inside Ford's BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall, Michigan.

Why Ford is advancing a Michigan EV battery plant that could lose federal support

Ford’s 2023 announcement of a new LFP battery plant in the US was touted as evidence of the IRA’s success. 

Cobalt? So yesterday. Nickel? Passé. It’s manganese that’s all the rage these days.

That’s one takeaway from recent announcements from General Motors and Ford about advancements in so-called lithium-manganese-rich, or LMR, battery cells for EVs that they’re racing to bring to market.

This innovation is sought-after in the EV sector because LMR cells promise to deliver impressive battery ranges for EVs while lowering costs. Reducing 

 is a key goal across the automotive industry because 

 make up a significant chunk of the overall cost of EVs, and price is a barrier to higher EV adoption.

“It’s kind of the best of both worlds,” Sam Abuelsamid, VP of market research at Telemetry, told Tech Brew of manganese, a raw material used in lithium-ion batteries.

“It’s roughly the same cost as [a lithium iron phosphate] cell, but only slightly less energy density than nickel,” he said. “So it gives you the advantages of both.”

GM and LG Energy Solution—which have a battery-making joint venture called Ultium Cells—on May 13 announced plans to “commercialize [LMR] prismatic battery cells for future GM electric trucks and full-size SUVs” in what they described as “a new battery technology breakthrough.” GM said its goal is “to become the first automaker to deploy LMR batteries in EVs.”

Ultium Cells plans to start commercial production of LMR cells in the US by 2028, according to a news release, with pre-production slated to start by late 2027.

Their announcement came on the heels of Ford 

 what it described as a “breakthrough” around LMR battery cells. The automaker said that it was working to scale LMR battery cells and integrate them into its EV lineup by decade’s end, according to a 

 by Charles Poon, Ford’s director of electrified propulsion engineering.

“LMR is the answer to ‘what next?,’” Poon wrote. “Our goal is clear: to achieve cost parity with gasoline vehicles and deliver affordable customer solutions tailored to their needs. The introduction of LMR is a key enabler in offering electric vehicles that are both accessible and desirable.”

Andy Oury, a battery engineer and business planning manager for GM’s VP of battery, propulsion, and sustainability, told Tech Brew that GM’s pursuit of LMR cells, which dates back to 2015, is driven by the goals of improving battery performance, establishing an independent supply chain in North America, and bringing down costs.

“We don’t think anybody’s making cheaper cells than we are,” he said. “We want to build on that by taking our cell costs lower, and by making sure we’re the leaders in battery pack costs.”

GM now has a dozen EVs on the market, all powered by nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries. Going forward, Oury said, the automaker wants to introduce options across its EV lineup by offering LFP and LMR battery cells as well.

Battery engineers, he said, worked for a long time to reduce the amount of cobalt—which is expensive, and the 

 is rife with human-rights concerns—in battery cells. Now, they’re working to reduce nickel content and substitute it with manganese, which is cheap and easy to source in North America.

“Going forward, we’ll be offering multiple chemistries where NMC will continue to offer the longest range or fit into the tightest spaces for specialty and premium vehicles,” Oury said. “We’ll have LFP for entry-level vehicles. And then the new entry we’re talking about today, LMR, squarely in the middle. Hopefully we can take a really big chunk of the market with LMR.”

An employee holds a full-size prototype LMR battery cell at the General Motors Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center in Warren, Michigan. 

GM aims to bring lithium manganese-rich battery cells to market by 2028

General Motors aims to bring lithium manganese-rich battery cells to market by 2028.

This emerging battery cell chemistry has automakers optimistic about longer ranges, lower costs

The big battery innovation boom doesn’t just mean companies are discovering new ways of manufacturing batteries: It also includes startups figuring out how to make existing batteries last longer.

Two startups that increase the lifecycle of large-scale batteries each received more than $10 million in venture capital funding this month. Sonocharge Energy, which uses acoustics to make batteries last longer and charge quicker, secured $23.5 million from Honda and investors Cycle Capital, Temasek, and Khosla Ventures. And Moment Energy, a Canadian large-scale battery repurposer, got $15 million to build the world’s first second-life battery factory from the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund and Voyager Ventures.

Both investments are tied to electric vehicles—Sonocharge Energy batteries can be used in EVs, and the batteries that Moment Energy recycles are from EVs—but have applications relevant to large-scale energy storage, too: Sonocharge batteries can help power data centers, and Moment Energy’s battery energy storage system can provide backup power for hospitals, remote communities, and manufacturing facilities.

“Sonocharge Energy is an exemplary case of how technology can facilitate electrification by improving performance and scale its deployment,” Andrée-Lise Méthot, Cycle Capital’s managing partner, said in a statement.

Moment Energy’s $15 million in funding comes on the heels of the company receiving more than $20 million from the Department of Energy to fund its second-life gigafactory, which will be built in Texas.

“Our mission to provide worldwide access to clean, affordable, and reliable power aligns perfectly with the DOE’s goals,” Moment Energy CEO Edward Chiang said after the Department’s funding was announced. “This facility will be instrumental in our commitment to enable all retired EV batteries to be repurposed by 2030.”

Amazon and Honda back startups aimed at increasing battery lifecycles

Amazon and Honda contributed to multimillion-dollar funding rounds for battery startups. 

Big-name funders back startups aimed at increasing battery lifecycles

 of mining critical raw materials for them, how well they hold a charge––and crucially, how much they degrade over time.

That last consideration is the subject of a new paper 

 this month by researchers at Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

The report, titled “Dynamic cycling enhances battery lifetime,” reaches a conclusion that was surprising to its authors: Contrary to popular belief, the ways that batteries discharge power in real-world driving conditions can actually 

 the lifetime of lithium-ion EV batteries by as much as 38%.

“We cycled batteries in ways that are representative of real EV driving, and tried to compare that to how batteries are regularly cycled—meaning, charged and discharged—traditionally in the lab,” Alexis Geslin, a lead co-author of the paper and a PhD candidate at Stanford, told Tech Brew. “Usually in the lab, they are charged and discharged with a constant current, just because it’s easy to implement. But in real life, you don’t drive your vehicle at a constant pace.”

The findings, he said, have implications for the way researchers conduct experiments on battery cells––and for the ways that battery management systems are designed. And it’s good news for EV buyers because it suggests that their vehicles’ batteries might hold up longer than they expected.

“Instead of having to change your battery every 10 years,” Geslin said, “you may just be able to keep your battery for 15 years.”

To conduct the study, researchers cycled 92 commercial EV lithium-ion cells over the course of two years. They tested four different “discharge profiles.”

The research also involved using machine learning to help unravel some of the complexities of real-world driving conditions, Geslin said.

In the report, the authors explained that lithium-ion batteries’ performance depends on how, exactly, the batteries are used. “Understanding how degradation occurs across realistic use cases is essential to accelerate material design and improve battery management systems,” they wrote.

Historically, researchers have conducted testing on lithium-ion batteries in labs using constant-current discharge profiles. In real life, however, drivers are often stopping and starting––meaning, the battery is discharging in more dynamic ways.

“This work illustrates the importance of testing batteries under realistic conditions of use and challenges the broadly adopted convention of constant current discharge in the laboratory,” the researchers concluded. “Evaluating batteries with realistic cycling profiles is necessary to properly understand aging mechanisms at the chemistry, material, and cell levels.”

Geslin said that while the findings may not have direct bearing on the costs of manufacturing batteries, they suggest that EV batteries may last longer than previously thought.

The findings could help alleviate concerns about how battery degradation influences EVs’ 

 that there are growing efforts in the EV battery sector to validate battery performance and health in used EVs, prices of which also influence the new-vehicle market.

Battery degradation is a common concern for prospective EV buyers. But there may be growing awareness that EV batteries hold up pretty well.

“We have a lot of good science that explains how batteries age and what accelerates their degradation,” Liz Najman, director of market insights for EV startup Recurrent, told 

. “That data comes from laboratory testing on battery cells, so the way it translates to EV battery packs…is still a bit of an open question. But from everything we’re seeing, EV packs are holding up a lot better than these test cells.”

Stanford research finds EV batteries hold up better than previously thought

“Instead of having to change your battery every 10 years, you may just be able to keep your battery for 15 years,” one of the report’s lead co-authors tells Tech Brew.

EV Batteries

LGES exec ‘cautiously optimistic’ battery maker won’t face ICE raids again

How is tariff uncertainty impacting tech?

Why automakers like GM and Ford are investing in LFP battery tech

Why Ford is advancing a Michigan EV battery plant that could lose federal support

This emerging battery cell chemistry has automakers optimistic about longer ranges, lower costs

Big-name funders back startups aimed at increasing battery lifecycles

Stanford research finds EV batteries hold up better than previously thought

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