The onshoring of battery manufacturing for EVs started as a trickle during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it’s a tsunami.

In 2019, just two battery factories were operating in the United States with another two under construction. Today there are about 30 battery factories either planned, under construction or operational in the country.

U.S. president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law August 16, 2022, might not have been the initial catalyst behind the onshoring battery factory trend. But it did help open the spigot and accelerate the pace of factory projects — not to mention sparking a climate tech arms race with the EU. One year later, we’re here to make sense of it.

China long controlled the supply and manufacture of lithium-ion batteries. The country’s grip on that supply chain began to loosen after automakers, hesitant to repeat the chip shortage crisis that hampered manufacturing during the pandemic, began promising to build EVs and batteries closer to home in 2021.

What has followed is a wave of automakers and battery makers — foreign and domestic — pledging to produce North American–made batteries before 2030. See each automaker’s plans here.

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