https://www.wired.com/story/the-new-climate-bill-demands-all-american-ev-batteries/

The New Climate Bill Demands All-American EV Batteries

AUG15, 2022

“This could be the US moment, where now there’s a guaranteed EV market,” says Kwasi Ampofo, who heads up metals and mining research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “This could potentially be a game changer, in the sense that it empowers US companies and US battery manufacturers to invest.”

Still, it isn’t going to be easy. The auto industry has madestridesto produce battery cells and packs within the United States and closer to EV factories—a step that will help them qualify for half of the credits proposed in the IRA. But resource extraction and processing remain major gaps in the earlier stages of the supply chain. They will be hard to plug up quickly. “They build the cells here now, but they still build everything for the cells in China. So it’s just shifted the burden up one layer,” says Chris Burns, a former Tesla engineer and CEO of Novonix, which is building a plant to produce synthetic graphite in Tennessee.

While the share of domestic materials required to qualify for a tax credit in the Senate plan appears high—and indeed is—it is not theoretically impossible, analysts say. The US could have a domestic-ish EV industry, but it doesn’t yet.