We Checked 15 Battery Projects Announced in 2024. Three Are Making Anything.

In 2024, the battery supply chain was the hottest ticket in American economic development. Governors posed with gold shovels, megasites finally got their tenants and the press releases stacked up like pallets on a loading dock. Our Project Tracker logged 15 battery supply chain projects of $100 million or more that year, together worth $14.3 billion and promising more than 11,000 jobs.

Two years later, we went back to check the receipts. Three of the 15 are producing, and together they account for $350 million, or about 2% of the money announced. Five projects worth $4.9 billion are canceled or have left the site they announced.

Amplify Cell Technologies, Byhalia, Miss. ($1.9 billion, 2,000 jobs). The battery venture of Cummins, Daimler Truck and PACCAR began construction in 2024. Production slipped from 2027 to 2028, then to no date at all. In April the company laid off 73 of its 100 employees, and in September Daimler told Mississippi Today the timeline "is being adjusted to reflect today's market environment." Mississippi has already spent at least $107 million on the project. The Mississippi Development Authority says Amplify remains in compliance, and the company has until 2031 to hit its targets, with up to $232 million subject to repayment if it doesn't. Cummins, Daimler Truck and PACCAR did not respond to requests for comment.

AESC, Florence, S.C. ($1.5 billion, 1,080 jobs). AESC announced a second EV battery cell plant in Florence in 2024, next to the first one it was already building to supply BMW. The second plant never got past paper. South Carolina withdrew $111 million in bonds set aside for it in February 2025, before any was spent, after Commerce said AESC no longer had a fixed timeline. The first Florence plant has been paused since June 2025, and in July contractor Clayco sued AESC for more than $26 million in unpaid work. AESC did not respond to requests for comment.

Samsung SDI and General Motors, New Carlisle, Ind. ($3.5 billion, 1,600 jobs). The two companies set out to build an EV battery cell plant to supply GM's electric vehicles. They paused construction early this year as EV demand cooled. In August, Samsung SDI bought out GM's stake and said it would finish the plant to make batteries for energy storage first, not EV cells for GM. It's still a plant under construction, just not the one Indiana was promised.

EnerSys, Greenville County, S.C. ($500 million, 500 jobs). The industrial battery maker planned its first U.S. lithium-ion cell plant, backed by a federal grant. EnerSys has since refocused the plant on defense and aerospace cells at about a fifth of the planned capacity. Construction is now expected to start in the first half of its fiscal 2028, and the company hasn't given a new job number.

Natron Energy, Edgecombe County, N.C. ($1.4 billion, 1,062 jobs). The sodium-ion startup shut down in September 2025 after it couldn't raise more money. North Carolina's grant of up to $56.3 million paid out nothing, because it pays only after jobs are created. The Kingsboro megasite is now pitched for a data center campus.

Lyten, Reno, Nev. ($1 billion, 200 jobs). The Silicon Valley startup planned a lithium-sulfur battery gigafactory at the Reno-Stead airport, with groundbreaking in 2025 and a first phase opening in 2028. The Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority, which owns the site, said in January that lease negotiations had broken down. "We've ceased all communications with them," Lissa Butterfield, the authority's manager of planning and environmental services, told KRNV. Lyten said it had chosen to pursue "an opportunity to acquire assets that are already built and can be converted to lithium sulfur" overseas, and that federal policy and local opposition were not factors.

ICL Group, St. Louis ($574 million, 153 jobs). The Israeli chemical company planned a plant in north St. Louis to make lithium iron phosphate cathode material for batteries. The Energy Department pulled ICL's $197 million grant in October 2025, and ICL dropped its North American plans weeks later.

Graphite One, Trumbull County, Ohio ($435 million, 160 jobs). The Alaska graphite developer planned a plant to make battery anode material at a former Army depot outside Niles. Graphite One ended its lease in May after FirstEnergy couldn't deliver a substation in time, and moved the project to Conneaut in Ashtabula County. Ohio kept the project; the community that announced it didn't.

Stardust Power, Muskogee, Okla. ($1 billion) reports site preparation but has no financing in place, and its latest quarterly report warns of "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue. Mitra Chem, Muskegon, Mich. ($125 million, 150 jobs) has announced no groundbreaking. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

The plants that are running share a profile. They're smaller, they assemble or package rather than invent new chemistry, and most of them sit close to a customer.

Two more are close. Microporous started real construction in May on its $1.35 billion separator plant in Pittsylvania County, Va., 18 months after a ceremonial groundbreaking, and now cites about 1,800 jobs instead of 2,015. Canadian Solar's battery plant in Shelbyville, Ky. ($711.9 million, 1,572 jobs) is finishing its first phase. Canadian Solar did not respond to questions about when production will begin.

The good news for taxpayers is that most of these deals were built to pay on delivery. North Carolina paid Natron nothing. South Carolina pulled AESC's second-plant bonds before spending a dime. Where public money did go out early, it went into the ground: Mississippi's $107 million at Byhalia, and Florence's $4.1 million in water and sewer upgrades for a plant that's still paused.

That's the lesson for anyone negotiating the next deal. A clawback protects the money you haven't spent yet. Site work, roads and utilities are spent the day the contractor leaves.

We pulled every 2024 project in the Location Decision Project Tracker in batteries and battery materials with announced capital investment of at least $100 million: 15 in all. We checked each one's status against company statements, state agencies, incentive records and local reporting through Oct. 19, 2026. We also contacted the five projects whose status was least clear. None responded by our Oct. 27 deadline. Investment and job figures are the original announced numbers; several have since changed. "Producing" means a plant is open and shipping product, even if it hasn't reached full output.

See something we got wrong, or know where one of these stands? Tell us at [email protected].

Receipts is Location Decision's series checking what happened to the projects announced in our Tracker.