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owenversteeg | 1 month ago
Go through a list of IRA projects, though, and you'll see two things: 1) they weren't generally killed by Trump, and 2) the IRA still did not get the US competitive with China. Let's take the largest one, the Toyota plant in NC, which is operational, and impressive in that it makes the batteries from raw materials BUT it has an eye-watering cost for the capacity ($~14B for 30 GWh/yr vs. $>4B for 30GWh/yr at Hyundai's plant.) Compare that to a Chinese plant at $50-100M/GWh and you can see that despite huge subsidies at several levels - including a $35/kWh subsidy for domestic cell production - the US is far behind here.
Look at the others and you'll see similar stories. Ford-SK On just split up because the F-150 is too expensive, demand is soft, and SK On wants to do energy storage. If we could make the F-150 competitively, demand would be higher, but it's incredibly expensive relative to a Chinese EV.
The more promising story is in solar (panel manufacturing and installs) but again, not a cure-all under Biden or a catastrophe under Trump. The US solar industry just had its third largest quarter on record, and we can now make every part of a solar panel in the US in volume. Module production capacity is at 60 GW, up 37% from Dec 2024, and cell production is at 3.2 GW, up from 1.2 GW a year ago [1.] That's a much prettier picture (regarding manufacturing) than in the EU, where manufacturing capacity is far lower and not growing nearly as quickly, although the EU has a larger installed base of (mostly Chinese) panels.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/biden-...
[1] https://seia.org/news/third-largest-quarter-on-record/
Good explainer of PV panel production process: https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/ex...
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