China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) is looking for sites for a $5 billion battery plant in North America, news agency Bloomberg reported. The report has caused concern as well as optimism in the United States with some fearing that the US may fall behind China in the fields of economy, energy and national security.
CATL is the world’s biggest manufacturer of electric-vehicle batteries and people familiar with the developments have told news agency Bloomberg that it is looking for sites in Mexico, Canada, and the US. It plans to build an 80 gigawatt-hour plant which would supply electric vehicle makers like Tesla and other companies with batteries.
Jeff Chamberlain, the CEO of Volta Energy Technologies, which is a capital firm spun out of Argonne National Laboratory and primarily invests in energy storage said there are no objections to the CATL scouting for sites in the US but advised startups to be vigilant about production as the IP addresses of the startups could filter back to China.
Chamberlain, however, said that this is a good initiative as the US could face supply-chain crunch on batteries and it should try to procure as many cells as possible. He is also hopeful that this could create thousands of jobs and increase EV adoption in the US domestically.
Jim Greenberger, the executive director of NAATBatt International, also remained positive but said that China needs to bring with it battery manufacturing technology and know-how to the US. The jobs should not be low-wage assembly jobs.
Abigail Seadler Wulf, the director of critical minerals strategy at Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) told Bloomberg that she remained concerned about the US’ dependence on energy and the security of the supply chain. She also expressed concern that CATL’s entry could increase US’ dependence on China.
Wulf pointed towards the energy crisis Europe is concerned about in the wake of the war on Ukraine. She said that the US should be wary of CATL’s entry into the US market lest it makes the nation dependent on China for electric-vehicle batteries. “We see what’s happening with the EU’s over-reliance on Russia for their energy today; we don’t want to be in that situation,” Wulf was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
Read the Latest News and Breaking News here
Comments
0 comment