The last time the U.S. tried to foster domestic battery manufacturing, its star company ended up being scooped up by a Chinese conglomerate. Can the Biden administration avoid the same fate?
President George W. Bush spoke with the press alongside A123 executives in front of the White House in February 2007. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
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Six months ago, in early October, Doug Campbell sat down in front of a camera in Louisville, Colorado, just 20 miles outside of Denver, to deliver some big news. Dressed in a trucker cap and hooded sweatshirt, the 42-year-old chief executive officer of battery start-up Solid Power looked more Rocky Mountain-cool than materials scientist-serious, but he didn’t miss a beat as he rattled off his company’s major electrochemical achievement.
“Today, we are pleased to announce the production and delivery of the company’s first generation multi-layer, multi-amp-hour, all solid-state lithium-metal cell,” he said.
For the battery industry, all solid-state lithium-ion cells are a holy grail: they can store dramatically more energy while simultaneously being safer to charge and use. Analysts say they could unlock enormous profits as well as a host of technological leaps, including
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