Half the cost of a lithium-ion battery is the cathode. China makes roughly 90% of the world's supply. Tesla just switched on the first plant in North America producing it at large scale.
America finally makes the hard part.
For twenty years the deal was that we design the product and China makes the chemistry inside it. A car could be assembled in Texas, with cells built in Texas, and still be strategically Chinese, because the powder inside those cells crossed the Pacific. In 2025 Beijing even added cathode production technology to its export control list. Governments don't restrict the export of things that don't matter. China looked at its cathode position and decided it was leverage worth protecting.
Tesla built it anyway.
And they didn't copy the Chinese process. They leapfrogged it. Conventional cathode lines need solvent slurries, football-field drying ovens, and a solvent recovery plant. Tesla's dry coating deletes all three. The material fought back for years, cracking and delaminating under compression, and Tesla only confirmed fully dry production of both electrodes in January 2026. Seven years after buying Maxwell for the technology, it works at scale.
The permit for this building was filed in 2022 under the codename Project Cathode. Four years from dirt to powder, sitting next door to the cells it feeds.
Every other automaker on the continent still imports theirs.
