General Motors is aiming for a domestic battery supply chain within two to three years, its battery chief said in an interview published on Saturday, four days after the Trump administration attacked Ford for licensing Chinese technology to make cells in Michigan.
GM imports finished battery packs for its cheapest electric car from China, and reports last year identified the supplier as the same company at the centre of the case against Ford: the world’s largest EV battery maker, CATL.
“We’re developing a supply chain such that, two years from now, three years from now, it will be domestic,” Kurt Kelty, GM’s VP of Battery and Sustainability, told CNBC. “That’s what we’re aiming for. When we get into market, we’ve got a domestic source for that.”
Kelty was speaking about a sodium-ion cell for stationary energy storage that GM is developing with the startup Peak Energy and does not expect in commercial production until around 2029.
A GM spokesperson told CNBC that the company would apply the same priority to cells for future electric vehicles, without giving a date.
Asked about Ford days before the Transportation Department’s letter, Kelty said: “They’re following a different path. We think it’s more valuable to develop this all domestically, take advantage of domestic supply chains, and develop a technology that’s actually better than the incumbent technology.”
The Bolt
GM said in August last year that it would import electric vehicle batteries from China to power the Chevrolet Bolt.
Reuters and other outlets identified the supplier as Contemporary Amperex Technology Co (CATL), citing people familiar with the arrangement.
“For several years, other US automakers have depended on foreign suppliers for LFP battery sourcing and licensing,” GM said at the time. “To stay competitive, GM will temporarily source these packs from similar suppliers to power our most affordable EV model.”
A person familiar with the arrangement told Reuters it was a stopgap until GM could make its own lithium iron phosphate cells, which the company said would begin in the United States in 2027.
Whether the packs still come from CATL has not been confirmed.
The distinction GM draws is between importing finished Chinese packs, which it does, and licensing Chinese process technology to make cells on American soil, which Ford does and which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attacked.
In his letter to Ford CEO Jim Farley, released on September 8, Duffy said the department remained “deeply alarmed by Ford’s continued reliance on licensed technology from Chinese battery manufacturer CATL” at Marshall, Michigan.
Ford called the letter “a wrongheaded attempt to capture headlines”, said the arrangement is “a limited technology-licensing and services agreement, not a joint venture or foreign-owned manufacturing operation”, and noted that it owns the plant and employs its 1,700 workers.
The White House then posted that Ford is “a GREAT American company”.
GM Looked at the Licence Too
GM explored CATL technology twice.
It considered a plant in Illinois under a licence structured like Ford’s, abandoning it in 2023 after the backlash against Marshall, according to two people involved in the talks who spoke to Crain’s Detroit Business in June 2025. GM declined to comment on the project.
Separately, Reuters reported in September 2024 that GM was in talks to buy cells based on CATL technology from a US plant that Japan’s TDK would fund and operate.
Bill Ford, Ford’s Executive Chairman, said in June 2025 that “others in our industry are trying to submarine” the Marshall plant, calling it “sour grapes”. He did not name GM.
Four people familiar with the matter told Crain’s that GM was behind lobbying for tighter foreign-entity rules and for budget language targeting licences of the Ford-CATL type.
GM spent about $8.2 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025, a record for the company.
“GM has been investing in a resilient critical minerals and battery supply chain to support American innovation, manufacturing and economic security,” GM spokeswoman Liz Winter said then.
China’s Sodium-ion
Sodium-ion replaces lithium and ferrous sulfate with sodium derived from soda ash, which the United States has in quantity.
Kelty said the chemistry tolerates a wider temperature range, letting cells run without active cooling and removing a major cost in stationary storage.
The trade-off is density. Sodium-ion cells are larger and heavier for the same energy, which is why the application is the grid rather than a car.
“The better thing to do is try to leapfrog, come up with a different technology that’s actually better that we can actually source here,” Kelty said.
China leads there too. It dominates commercial sodium-ion cells and their precursors. CATL said deliveries of its large-scale sodium-ion storage system begin in China this month, with a gigawatt-hour targeted by the end of the year.
LG Energy Solution, GM’s cell partner, was reported in January to be building a sodium-ion pilot line at its plant in Nanjing, chosen in part for Chinese cathode suppliers, though the company said its plans were not final.
Peak Energy has been buying commercial sodium-ion cells from Chinese suppliers while its own US factory is built, IEEE Spectrum reported in July.
The date has also moved. When the Peak partnership was announced on June 9, GM said it aimed to commercialise the cells by 2028.
CNBC now reports commercial production around 2029.
A Shrinking EV Business
GM sold 27,395 electric vehicles in the United States in the second quarter, down 40.7%, taking them to 3.8% of its deliveries from 6.2% a year earlier. First-half sales fell to 56,679 units, leaving GM second to Tesla.
The Chevrolet Equinox EV remains its best seller and fell 62% in the quarter. In January the company announced a $6 billion charge to cut electric vehicle capacity.
Its vehicle battery plans have shifted twice in two years. High-nickel cells run at Warren, Ohio. Lithium iron phosphate for vehicles is due at Spring Hill, Tennessee, in late 2027, on lines that began making storage cells this year after a $70 million retooling.
Lithium manganese-rich cells with LG, claimed at 33% more energy than the best LFP at comparable cost, are due in 2028 and are not yet made at automotive scale anywhere.
