The Detroit News reports that two years after promising an electric vehicle manufacturing revolution, America’s Battery Belt has collapsed into a landscape of stalled construction sites, mass layoffs, and desperate pivots to non-EV products. Despite $28 billion in taxpayer subsidies, the grand vision of Midwest EV dominance is crumbling just six weeks after federal tax credits expired.

The carnage extends from Kokomo, Indiana to Bowling Green, Kentucky, revealing what happens when an industry built on government life support faces actual market conditions. Battery plants designed for thousands of workers sit largely empty. Multibillion-dollar facilities remain unfinished shells. And automakers are quietly pivoting away from EVs while maintaining public commitments to electrification.

Kokomo’s Cautionary Tale: From Battery Boomtown to Energy Storage Pivot

Kokomo, Indiana’s transformation into a battery manufacturing hub began with soaring promises. The Detroit News reports that Stellantis and Samsung SDI announced plans for a massive StarPlus Energy complex that would employ 2,800 people making batteries for EV Jeeps, Dodges and Rams, backed by up to $7.5 billion in federal loans and sweeping local tax breaks.

The reality looks starkly different. Most hourly employees were recently called back, but not to build EV batteries. Starting last month, part of the plant pivoted to make batteries for energy storage—units often used to help stabilize electrical grids and support data centers. Another section of the facility is switching to make EV batteries for export to Europe, where demand is stronger, according to The Detroit News.

Kokomo Mayor Tyler Moore told reporters there’s “a gray cloud looming over the EV industry” that’s affected plans at the StarPlus Energy plant.

“They were already supposed to be halfway through or working toward completion of the second battery plant by now,” Moore said. “So yes, there’s concerns that they’re slow-rolling that, and of course, there’s a lot of chatter when you hear of layoffs, or lines being retooled and such.”

The first plant has already made a profound impact on the city, from suppliers setting up shop nearby to a large influx of Korean nationals from Samsung who have arrived in town to help get the plant running. But the second project remains uncertain as Stellantis evaluates market conditions.

Michigan’s Manufacturing Graveyard: Billions in Subsidies, Empty Buildings

Michigan is feeling the effects of a bleak EV battery market even more acutely. A planned $1.6 billion Our Next Energy factory in Van Buren Township, in line for $237 million in state taxpayer subsidies, was supposed to be bustling with workers by now. The Detroit News reports that much of the building remains a vacant shell with dirt floors, and some of the space is listed for lease.

The Michigan Economic Development Corp. has disbursed $70 million in subsidies, but payments are now paused as officials seek to understand “any updated scope of the project,” spokeswoman Danielle Emerson told the publication.

Mujeeb Ijaz, Our Next Energy’s founder and CEO, said in an email that about 50 employees are working in one part of the building on battery cell production and development for defense purposes, and plans remain to eventually make energy storage batteries at another section. But the largest part of the building, intended to make EV batteries, “is being delayed due to automotive uncertainty.”

Other Michigan examples paint a similarly grim picture. Mining firm Fortescue recently scrapped a $210 million, 600-job EV battery project underway in Detroit that was also in line for taxpayer funds but never received payments. BorgWarner shuttered two of its battery facilities in Hazel Park and Warren earlier this year, laying off 188 people. Freudenberg e-Power Systems is gradually closing its Midland and Auburn Hills facilities and cutting 324 jobs due to what it called “a decrease in demand for heavy-duty electric vehicles in North America.”

Kentucky Plants: Construction Stalled, Promises Broken

Three hours south from Kokomo to the tiny farming community of Glendale, Kentucky, a similar story unfolds at a planned $5.8 billion battery complex owned by Ford and South Korean firm SK On. The Detroit News reports that earlier this summer, one of the nearly mile-long factories the size of 60 football fields started producing its first batteries for Ford’s F-150 Lightning pickup, with plans to supply the E-Transit van later this year.

But the second mega plant remains an empty shell. Local officials said they don’t believe the combined complex will reach its 5,000-worker goal anytime soon. About 1,450 people currently work there. Ford sold just 1,500 Lightnings and 260 E-Transits in October, its two worst-selling models, according to The Detroit News.

BlueOval SK will watch demand and “be in position to respond as needed,” spokesperson Keli McAlister said in an email. In the meantime, it’s looking for customers outside Ford to pick up the slack. Amid the EV market slowdown, the joint venture has also postponed the start of battery production at its BlueOval City plant in Stanton, Tennessee, by two years until 2027.

Another hour’s journey south to Bowling Green, Kentucky, a partially finished battery plant from Chinese-owned firm Automotive Energy Supply Corp., or AESC, looms over farm fields on the city’s outskirts. The $2 billion factory had secured a commitment of up to $122 million in state taxpayer support and was supposed to open early this year to supply Mercedes-Benz Group AG, but neighbors said the construction site has been quiet for months.

Several entrances were boarded up on a recent morning, and weeds sprouted from the surrounding construction site. AESC spokesperson Brad Grantham said the company continues to make infrastructure upgrades on the property involving the plant’s energy supply.

GM’s Massive Retreat: $2 Billion Battery Plants Go Dark

The September 30, 2025 expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit has dramatically reshaped the American electric vehicle market. Congress eliminated the incentive through President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” cutting short a program that was originally scheduled to run through 2032.

General Motors announced in late October it would lay off more than 3,400 workers across battery plants and other EV facilities, including 1,200 at the Detroit-area EV plant Factory Zero. Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson recently said the company expects “EV demand growth to slow pretty significantly.”

Beyond the Detroit assembly plant, GM is temporarily idling battery cell production at two critical facilities operated through its joint venture with South Korea’s LG Energy Solution. The Ultium Cells plant in Warren, Ohio will see 550 workers laid off indefinitely, with another 850 facing temporary layoffs. In Spring Hill, Tennessee, 700 workers at the second Ultium Cells facility will be temporarily laid off.

The automaker has invested more than $2 billion in each of these facilities, betting heavily on vertical integration to control battery costs and secure supply chains. The pause in production suggests demand has fallen far short of expectations following the tax credit expiration.

The Energy Storage Pivot: A Face-Saving Retreat

More stalled EV battery factories are likely to explore building batteries for energy storage instead, experts said. The stationary units range in size from a large suitcase up to a shipping container or bigger, and can help stabilize the electrical grid or provide backup power in emergencies.

Companies, including AESC, LG Energy Solution and now StarPlus Energy in Kokomo, have already begun the conversion process at their plants. SK On, Ford’s partner in Kentucky, recently said it would use part of its Georgia EV battery plant to start building some.

The pivot will require major overhauls to equipment and production lines. But the goal is to prevent these multibillion-dollar facilities—originally designed to churn out hundreds of thousands of EV batteries per year—from becoming unused “stranded assets,” said Conrad Layson, senior alternative propulsion analyst for AutoForecast Solutions LLC.

A recent Samsung SDI investor presentation says that while domestic EV demand is uncertain thanks to looser emissions standards, repealed subsidies, and higher tariffs under Trump, battery storage is “growing as renewable energy generation and AI demand expands.”

Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst with Atlas Public Policy, expects to see “more and more of a shift in production from EV batteries to battery storage.” Battery storage technology still qualifies for key federal subsidies, even as EV tax credits have been slashed under the Trump administration.

Workers Pay the Price: Dreams Shattered, Jobs Lost

Daniel Jackson was among the dozens of salaried StarPlus workers laid off over the summer, just a few months after hundreds of hourly workers were cut. The 37-year-old was thriving in his job as a production supervisor over a small team assembling batteries, The Detroit News reports. The pay was solid at about $84,000 per year, he said, and the benefits generous; much of the work was highly automated, making the 12-hour shifts tolerable.

“I’m going to be there forever,” Jackson said he figured when he was hired last year, noting at that point plans for the second plant were still moving forward. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘This battery stuff is the new hot thing.'”

But the mood inside the plant shifted quickly, and by summer, production was stopped and he and other managers were mostly left to clean, organize and maintain machinery as they pondered how long it would be until more layoffs hit. After losing his job in August, Jackson eventually found work at a nearby steel mill, but he said it doesn’t compare to his old gig at StarPlus.

Frank Bush, a utility mechanic at the plant, said given the slowing EV market, it was smart for his plant to pivot to making energy storage batteries, which will help keep it open. But he and other workers who spoke with The Detroit News said they’re not confident it will bring enough work to add more staff or justify building the second plant.

“The market right now does not support an EV manufacturing facility,” said Bush, 52, a utility mechanic at the plant who watched hundreds of his colleagues get laid off over this year when production stopped.

The Numbers Don’t Lie: EV Sales Collapse Post-Subsidy

The immediate impact of losing federal subsidies became apparent in October sales data. U.S. EV sales plummeted 24% in October, dropping from 98,289 units in September to just 74,897 units—validating predictions about subsidy-dependent demand.

Light vehicle sales overall decreased 6.5% to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 15.3 million units in October, marking the lowest sales pace in 15 months. The combination of higher effective vehicle prices due to lost tax credits, ongoing tariff pressures, elevated interest rates, and labor market concerns creates a particularly challenging environment.

UAW Pushes Back: “This Is Wrong-Headed”

UAW President Shawn Fain recently told union members he believes the pullback in automaker EV investments and layoffs is wrong-headed, even if the companies are facing fewer federal incentives and a more sluggish market than expected.

“It’s a choice by the companies to not invest in what we know is going to be the future,” he said. “The electric vehicle market is still growing — you look at China, they’re now the largest exporter of vehicles in the world, and many of them are electric.”

Local Communities: Broken Promises, Strained Budgets

Local officials in Bowling Green—a college town of about 80,000 where the Chevrolet Corvette is built—either didn’t respond to, or declined, interview requests about the stalled battery plant. A city spokesperson, Deborah West, wouldn’t comment specifically on the project’s status but said in an email that the city remains focused on economic and workforce development efforts more broadly.

At its battery plant in Holland, LG made costly changes so that it could make energy storage batteries and not EV ones, as was its original plan. Company spokesperson Sophia Kim wouldn’t confirm if LG also expects to make some energy storage batteries at the Lansing facility, as a Korean publication recently reported.

For Glendale, the BlueOval SK project has already had sweeping effects on the county and Elizabethtown. Thousands of new apartment units, new subdivisions, a couple of new grocery stores, even an investor who wants to refresh the old local mall. Around a billion dollars of additional investments were pledged locally by other companies after the original BlueOval SK announcement.

Yet the factory also continues to draw scrutiny from a group called “Committee for Marshall — Not the Megasite,” including over how the property was rezoned as well as environmental and traffic concerns. The resident group recently secured a legal victory from the Michigan Supreme Court, which ordered a lower court to reconsider the committee’s challenge of the project; the group is now waiting on that updated decision.

Regis Klingler, a Marshall resident who chairs the committee, said verbatim:

“Our group isn’t opposed to progress; we just want to make sure people have a say in what’s developed, and that it’s not all industrial development, and fits the character of the area.”

He acknowledged it would be a long shot to stop Ford from finishing the plant now. But the group hopes to secure more public input and transparency around future projects proposed for an adjacent 1,500 acres.

“The war’s not over,” he said. “The legal battle’s not over.”

Marshall Plant Pushes Forward Amid Uncertainty

Among the few projects forging ahead is Ford’s BlueOval Battery Park in south-central Michigan’s Marshall. The automaker slashed the size of the project, originally pegged to cost $3.5 billion, in late 2023 as EV demand appeared less certain, reducing gigawatt capacity by about 43% and cutting projected employment to 1,700 from around 2,500. A state incentive package was reduced to no more than $409 million from about $1 billion.

Ford says it needs the Marshall plant to produce a cheaper, lithium-iron-phosphate type of battery that will be critical to making less-expensive EVs of the future—including a midsize truck it plans to build at its Louisville Assembly Plant. The BlueOval SK factories in Kentucky and Tennessee are set up to make a more common type of battery using nickel, manganese and cobalt.

Choose Marshall, the local economic development agency, recently said the project has hit milestones, including hiring an initial round of more than 100 plant employees, employing 2,200 construction workers, and making initial property tax payments that will eventually total about $5 million per year. The automaker says exterior construction is complete and work is now focused on outfitting the interior.

But the project also continues to draw scrutiny from resident groups concerned about transparency and local control over future development.

The Bigger Picture: Taxpayers Left Holding The Bag

Across the Midwest and South—from Kokomo and Metro Detroit to Bowling Green, Kentucky, and beyond—the promises of a high-tech EV manufacturing revolution and the economic boost that comes with it are starting to fade.

Taxpayers committed at least $28 billion in combined loans, grants and similar subsidies to these massive projects across this Battery Belt region in recent years, a review by The Detroit News found—a sum that doesn’t include several sites in western states, many local government tax breaks or federal tax credits. With EV demand sagging and government-backed incentives ending, many of these projects now face an uncertain future.

The goal under former President Joe Biden was to slash greenhouse gases and turbocharge a new domestic EV supply chain that could help the United States take on China. But EV customer demand wasn’t matching lofty government and industry sales projections even before President Donald Trump took office, thanks to a mix of range anxiety, sparse charging networks, high sticker prices and anti-EV political messaging.

EVXL’s Take

We hate to say we told you so, but… we told you so. For months, EVXL has been documenting the house of cards that was America’s subsidy-fueled EV battery boom. The collapse we’re witnessing was entirely predictable—and we predicted it.

Back in June, we covered AESC’s $2 billion Bowling Green plant hitting the wall with construction halted indefinitely. In July, we reported on Senate Republicans pushing to end the $7,500 EV tax credit by September 30, warning that the industry was about to face its moment of truth. When Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” passed, we explained exactly what would happen: a brief surge as buyers rushed to beat the deadline, followed by a devastating collapse.

The October numbers proved us right. EV sales cratered 24% in a single month after the tax credit expired. Within weeks, GM announced 3,300 layoffs and idled $2 billion battery plants. Ford stopped F-150 Lightning production with no restart timeline. The dominos fell exactly as predicted.

What makes this particularly galling is the sheer scale of taxpayer money involved. $28 billion in subsidies across these Battery Belt projects, plus billions more in federal tax credits and local incentives. All to build an industry that couldn’t survive six weeks without government life support.

The energy storage pivot these plants are making tells you everything you need to know. When your EV battery plant has to make grid batteries instead because nobody wants electric cars at real market prices, you’ve admitted defeat. The companies are trying to spin this as flexibility and diversification. The reality is they’re scrambling to find any use for billions in assets that were supposed to power America’s electric revolution.

Meanwhile, Toyota just opened its $14 billion North Carolina battery plant—for hybrids, not pure EVs. The Japanese automaker’s cautious “multi-pathway” strategy suddenly looks prescient. While GM, Ford, and Stellantis bet everything on subsidized EVs, Toyota kept making what customers actually wanted. Now Toyota’s plant is running at full capacity while American Battery Belt facilities sit largely empty.

The human cost is devastating. Workers like Daniel Jackson who thought they’d found stable, well-paying manufacturing careers are now scrambling for jobs at steel mills. Communities that were promised economic revitalization are left with empty buildings and broken commitments. The promised 5,000 jobs at Ford’s Kentucky plant? Try 1,450. The second Stellantis plant in Kokomo that was supposed to be under construction? Indefinitely delayed.

This isn’t just an American problem—it’s a cautionary tale about industrial policy built on wishful thinking. China dominated battery technology by building an integrated supply chain and achieving genuine cost advantages. America tried to skip that step with subsidies and mandates, betting that if we built the factories, demand would follow. It didn’t.

UAW President Shawn Fain argues that companies are making a mistake by pulling back, pointing to China’s EV export dominance. But that’s precisely the point: Chinese EVs are competitive because they’re genuinely cheaper to build, not because Beijing is writing $7,500 checks to every buyer. When your competitive advantage disappears the moment subsidies expire, you never had one.

The Battery Belt collapse raises fundamental questions about America’s approach to industrial policy. Can we build competitive industries through subsidies and mandates, or does that just create bubbles that pop the moment support ends? The evidence from Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan suggests the latter.

For EVXL readers, the lesson is clear: be skeptical of government-driven booms that ignore market fundamentals. When politicians promise manufacturing revolutions powered by taxpayer dollars, ask whether the products can stand on their own. The $28 billion Battery Belt bet couldn’t. American taxpayers are left holding the bag for an industry that was built on hope and subsidies rather than genuine demand.

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