March 26, 2026
Robin Zeng is not known for understatement. The founder of CATL, the world’s largest EV battery manufacturer and China’s fourth-richest person, told the Wall Street Journal this week that the American electric vehicle market cannot succeed without his company’s technology. Scaling U.S. EV production without CATL, he said, “is difficult and the cost too high.”
The statement sounds like corporate bluster until you look at what Ford and GM are actually doing.
Ford Chose CATL Over Its Own Partners
Ford dropped SK Group, its South Korean battery joint-venture partner, and is now building a $3 billion plant in Michigan to manufacture CATL-designed lithium-iron-phosphate cells. Ford is paying CATL intellectual property royalties to work around import restrictions. Lisa Drake, a Ford executive overseeing the Michigan plant, was blunt about the alternative: “It probably would’ve taken us a decade to catch up and have LFP technology on our own.”
LFP batteries cost up to 30% less than nickel-based alternatives. They use no cobalt or nickel, reducing supply chain risk and cost. The chemistry was invented in the United States. Chinese companies, led by CATL and BYD, perfected it at scale while American manufacturers focused on nickel-manganese-cobalt cells for their higher energy density. That bet on NMC left U.S. automakers without a competitive low-cost chemistry at precisely the moment they need one.
GM Is Paying 60% Tariffs to Buy CATL Batteries Anyway
General Motors is importing CATL-made LFP batteries for the 2027 Chevrolet Bolt under a temporary legal arrangement, paying 60% tariffs on every cell. Two billion-dollar U.S. battery plants that GM built with LG Energy Solution remain idle. The math is striking: GM would rather pay punitive tariffs on Chinese cells than use its own domestic capacity, because the domestic cells are not cost-competitive for the vehicle GM needs to sell.
The Bolt is GM’s affordable EV entry point. Margins are razor thin. The difference between CATL’s LFP pricing and domestic NMC costs is the difference between a viable product and a loss leader. GM is simultaneously investing heavily in autonomous driving technology and restructuring its EV strategy, which makes battery cost even more critical to the bottom line.
The Numbers Behind the Claim
CATL posted more than $10 billion in profit in 2025. The company supplies batteries to approximately one in three electric vehicles sold globally. Its latest fast-charging technology delivers 320 miles of range in five minutes.
CATL is restricted from establishing factories in the United States over national security concerns. The Pentagon added CATL to its list of Chinese military-linked companies in January 2025, a designation CATL disputes and has vowed to fight legally. The result is a policy environment where American automakers need CATL’s technology but CATL cannot build on American soil, so the technology flows through licensing deals and tariff-burdened imports instead.
The tariff dynamic connects to a broader pattern reshaping the entire industry. For ongoing coverage of how trade policy is affecting automakers, see our Oil Crisis Tracker. The infrastructure gap CATL’s batteries are meant to address is equally stark: China now has 21 million EV charging points versus roughly 200,000 in the United States, a disparity that compounds the technology dependency Zeng is describing.
What Zeng Is Really Saying
The subtext of Zeng’s interview is a prediction about policy. He expects the U.S. market to remain small for the next several years but believes it “will have to be booming, because it is the trend. It is the future.” The implication: tariffs and restrictions are a temporary obstacle, not a permanent barrier, because the economics of electrification will eventually force a reckoning.
Whether Zeng is right about the timeline matters less than whether he is right about the dependency. Ford and GM are not partnering with CATL because they want to. They are doing it because the alternative is slower, more expensive, and years behind. That is not a trade policy problem. It is a technology gap, and closing it will take more than tariffs.
