How Trump Helped China Make America’s Cheapest EV

Everyone’s worried about affordability right now, including the companies that make cars. Especially the companies that make electric cars, which cost an average of $55,000.

That makes America’s newest and cheapest electric truck a welcome addition to the market—and an odd duck. Officially unveiled last week, the small, modular offering from Michigan-based automaking upstart Slate costs just below $25,000 for its base model, and the base model doesn’t get you much. You’ll have to pay more for everything, from powered windows to speakers.

But beyond being bare bones, there’s another hidden quirk that allows Slate to reach a rock-bottom price: a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery pack. It’s a technology invented in the US but perfected in China. They’re cheaper than traditional nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries.

In a quest to make lower-cost EVs, a handful of US-based manufacturers are on Slate’s path, leaning into the less popular chemistry. And in a weird way, the US boomlet in this particular battery chemistry has China to thank—and also President Donald Trump.

Changing Lanes

Slate wasn’t initially focused on LFP batteries, the website InsideEVs noted last week. The reason was simple: In 2022, Congress passed a sweeping climate law that created a tax credit of up to $7,500 for buyers of new EVs. To qualify for the full credit, manufacturers had to use batteries assembled in the US, and, eventually, made using materials from the US and its allies. Critically, the new rules discouraged the inclusion of materials from Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China, all dubbed “foreign entities of concern.”

Manufacturers focused on affordability planned to build vehicles with those restrictions in mind, including Slate.

Those rules made it problematic to use LFP batteries. US scientists discovered the materials’ battery applications back in the 1960s. But more than a decade ago, Western and Asian battery-makers shifted their focus to other, more energy-dense chemistries. Chinese manufacturers, though, decided they were willing to exchange LFP chemistry’s range issues for its promise to lower costs and improve stability.

Since then, Chinese EV giants including BYD and CATL have built up a robust supply chain around the chemistry, producing not only LFP cathodes, but also the capacity to mine, process, and manufacture everything else that goes into the batteries. Today, 97.8 percent of LFP cathode production takes place in China, according to figures from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a London research firm. (Nearly 85 percent of all cathode production happens in China, too.)

US automakers began to show interest in the technology even after the tax credit was first announced. Ford, for example, said it would partner with CATL to manufacture LFP batteries in the US, but the American automaker still had to weigh the cost and performance of the batteries with their tax-credit eligibility.

Then the rules changed, and automakers’ calculus got less complicated. Last summer, the GOP-led Congress fulfilled a long-standing Trump campaign promise to “end the electric vehicle mandate” by killing the tax credit. The move set EVs back in the US. Research firm BloombergNEF predicted earlier this month that US sales will fall by 19 percent this year because of the policy change, and the decisions automakers afterwards made to reduce their EV output.

Now automakers have to deal with a confusing and sluggish EV market. But they no longer have to worry about the foreign content of their EV batteries for fear of losing the tax credit. That opened the door for Slate and other companies to give LFPs another look.