America’s electric-vehicle manufacturing boom was supposed to rebuild industrial towns, create a domestic battery supply chain and reduce reliance on China. Instead, a growing collection of factories, expansions and production plans has been cancelled, delayed or redesigned.
A Reuters analysis of Atlas Public Policy data found that nearly $20 billion worth of U.S. EV and related manufacturing projects were cancelled in 2025 alone. Projects cancelled between January 2025 and August 24, 2026 had originally promised roughly 27,000 jobs, with the total likely understated because some announcements lacked employment estimates. The reversal cannot be traced to a single cause: EV demand was already developing more slowly than automakers once expected. But the elimination of consumer incentives and major changes to U.S. emissions, trade and energy policy have changed the economics behind billions of dollars in planned auto investment.
A Historic EV Investment Boom Has Suddenly Lost Momentum
The scale of the reversal becomes clearer when compared with the investment rush that preceded it. Reuters found that U.S. automotive manufacturing investment between 2019 and 2024 more than doubled from the previous six-year period, with electrification accounting for all of the growth. EV-related announcements reached a peak of roughly $55 billion in 2023. By 2025, however, newly announced investment had fallen to about $6.5 billion, only 29% of the previous year’s level. Nearly $20 billion in previously announced projects was cancelled during that year, according to the Atlas data analyzed by Reuters.
Those figures represent a sharp turn for an industrial strategy that had attracted extraordinary amounts of private capital. Atlas Public Policy calculated that companies announced $208.8 billion of U.S. EV and battery manufacturing investment between 2000 and September 2024, associated with more than 240,000 manufacturing jobs. More than $157 billion of that investment was announced after passage of the 2021 infrastructure law. The buildup included battery cells, critical-mineral processing, vehicle assembly and components, creating an interconnected manufacturing network rather than simply adding new vehicle assembly lines.
The End of the $7,500 Credit Changed the Market Almost Overnight
One of the clearest breaks came after federal EV purchase incentives ended. Legislation enacted in 2025 accelerated the termination of the new clean vehicle, previously owned clean vehicle and commercial clean vehicle credits. The IRS confirms that vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025 are no longer eligible for those incentives. For qualifying new vehicles, the previous credit had been worth as much as $7,500, making its disappearance significant for vehicles that already tended to carry higher purchase prices than comparable gasoline models.
Sales data showed how strongly buyers had reacted to the deadline. Cox Automotive said consumers rushed to purchase EVs before the incentive disappeared, pushing the EV share of new-vehicle sales to a record 10.5% in the third quarter of 2025. In the fourth quarter, U.S. EV volume plunged to about 234,000 vehicles, down 46% from the previous quarter and 36% from a year earlier. The weakness continued into 2026: first-quarter EV sales fell 27% year over year to 216,399 vehicles, while market share remained around 5.8%. That sudden reduction in expected demand forced automakers to reconsider factories designed around much higher production volumes.
Lordstown Shows What the Investment Reversal Means on the Ground
Few places illustrate the human cost better than Lordstown, Ohio. General Motors had operated an assembly plant in the region for more than half a century before closing it in 2019. A new chapter seemed to begin when GM and LG Energy Solution built a $2.3 billion battery plant nearby. The facility opened in 2022 and eventually employed about 1,300 people, helping inspire the nickname “Voltage Valley” for an area long associated with steel and traditional vehicle manufacturing. GM had described the project as part of its push to create a large domestic EV battery supply chain.
That optimism collided with weaker battery demand. Reuters reported that the Ultium Cells operation announced a production shutdown beginning in January 2026, with about 480 employees indefinitely laid off while roughly 850 others were told they would not be needed for months. Production restarted in August and about 700 workers returned, but approximately 600 remained on indefinite layoff. For workers, the disruption was more than an adjustment to an investment spreadsheet. Employees who had expected the plant to anchor long-term careers instead found themselves navigating another downturn in a community already familiar with the boom-and-bust cycles of the auto industry.
The So-Called Battery Belt Is Carrying Much of the Risk
The geographic distribution of the investment makes the pullback politically and economically complicated. Reuters calculated that approximately 87% of announced U.S. EV-related investment tracked by Atlas was located in states Donald Trump carried in the 2024 election. Roughly four-fifths of the subsequently cancelled investment was also located in those states. The concentration reflects where automakers found large industrial sites, lower land costs, established manufacturing workforces and substantial state-level economic-development incentives during the original investment rush.
The Southeast remains particularly exposed. A September 2026 Atlas Public Policy report found that six Southeastern states accounted for around 40% of announced U.S. EV manufacturing investment and 32% of announced manufacturing jobs, representing almost $74 billion and more than 61,300 jobs. The region has not simply stopped electrifying—EV sales and charging infrastructure have continued growing—but manufacturers increasingly cancelled, delayed or downsized individual production plans between July 2025 and June 2026. Nationwide, Reuters found that projects cancelled from January 2025 through August 24, 2026 had promised approximately 27,000 jobs. That figure excludes some announcements lacking employment estimates and projects that were reduced rather than fully cancelled.
Ford Is Turning Some EV Factories Toward Trucks and Grid Batteries
Ford’s shifting strategy demonstrates how automakers are trying to recover value from facilities built during the EV investment rush. In 2021, Ford and SK Innovation announced an extraordinary $11.4 billion manufacturing program across Tennessee and Kentucky. The Kentucky portion alone was expected to receive $5.8 billion and create about 5,000 jobs producing EV batteries. The Tennessee BlueOval City complex was originally designed around electric F-Series pickups and batteries, and the combined projects represented what Ford called its largest manufacturing investment at the time.
Demand assumptions have since changed. Reuters reported that Ford plans to use its unopened Tennessee assembly operation for gasoline-powered pickups after cancelling the EV pickup program originally intended for the site. In Kentucky, Ford is repurposing underused battery capacity toward stationary battery energy-storage systems. The company says it plans to invest roughly $2 billion in the storage business and establish at least 20 gigawatt-hours of annual capacity by late 2027. Reuters reported that Ford now expects approximately 2,100 workers at the Kentucky operation, less than half the workforce originally envisioned. Rather than abandoning batteries completely, Ford is redirecting some of the same equipment, expertise and capital toward a different rapidly expanding market.
Stellantis Is Also Rewriting Plans Built Around Faster EV Adoption
Stellantis has made similarly substantial changes. The company confirmed in February 2026 that it had cancelled the previously planned battery-electric Ram 1500, citing both customer demand and changes to the U.S. regulatory environment. Its financial reset included €2.9 billion in write-offs associated with cancelled products, €6 billion of platform impairments primarily related to lower expected volumes and profitability, and another €2.1 billion connected with resizing the EV supply chain. The changes formed part of a broader restructuring as management shifted capital toward products it expects to reach profitable scale.
The contrast with earlier expectations is striking in Kokomo, Indiana. Stellantis and Samsung SDI had announced two battery plants there with combined planned investment exceeding $6.3 billion and approximately 2,800 new jobs. Reuters reported that part of the complex is now stalled as Stellantis reassesses its battery requirements. The company has not abandoned electrification: current Stellantis job postings describe StarPlus Energy as supporting both electric mobility and the stationary energy-storage market. The emerging strategy is therefore less a complete rejection of batteries than an attempt to match expensive production capacity with a slower and more uncertain U.S. EV market.
The Policy Shift Goes Far Beyond the Consumer Tax Credit
Federal EV policy changed across several fronts after Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. Executive Order 14154 directed agencies to eliminate what the administration describes as the “EV mandate,” reconsider measures favouring electric vehicles and prioritize consumer choice among different powertrains. In February 2026, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized the rescission of the 2009 greenhouse-gas Endangerment Finding and federal greenhouse-gas standards for highway vehicles. The administration argues that these changes reduce regulatory costs and prevent federal rules from effectively forcing consumers and manufacturers toward EVs.
Reuters found that trade and immigration policies have also complicated battery manufacturing. Tariffs increased costs for some battery materials and components heavily sourced from China. Separately, a September 2025 federal immigration operation at a Hyundai-LG battery project in Georgia resulted in roughly 475 detentions. Many affected South Koreans were specialists involved in installing or calibrating sophisticated factory equipment. LG Energy Solution later said the disruption was expected to delay plant operations by two to three months. The administration said the enforcement action targeted unlawful employment practices, while companies and South Korean officials subsequently worked on ways to move specialist personnel legally between the two countries.
Battery Storage and Conventional Vehicles Are Absorbing Some of the Capital
Cancelled EV capacity does not automatically translate into abandoned factories. One potential destination is the rapidly growing stationary-storage business. U.S. Energy Information Administration data show utility-scale battery storage capacity reaching 43.6 gigawatts at the end of 2025 and almost 52 GW by June 2026. Operators reported plans for another 54 GW of capacity to come online over the subsequent two and a half years. Data centres, renewable-power projects and utilities all require batteries capable of balancing electricity supply and demand, giving manufacturers another market for some existing plants.
That helps explain Ford’s Kentucky conversion and Stellantis’ efforts to broaden battery production beyond vehicles. Conventional vehicles are also attracting renewed spending as manufacturers adapt factories to gasoline and hybrid products that currently generate stronger U.S. demand or profits. Reuters cautioned, however, that these new investments have not yet produced a net increase in automotive manufacturing employment. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures put seasonally adjusted U.S. motor-vehicle and parts manufacturing employment at approximately 963,000 in August 2026. Reuters calculated that employment in the sector had fallen about 1.3% since January 2025, even as manufacturers announced new investments elsewhere in their portfolios.
The Bigger Question Is Whether the U.S. Is Moving Against the Global Market
The U.S. slowdown is occurring while EV adoption continues expanding across much of the world. The International Energy Agency estimates that more than 20 million electric cars were sold globally in 2025, a 20% increase that pushed EVs to roughly one-quarter of worldwide new-car sales. China accounted for more than 13 million sales and an EV share approaching 55%, while European EV sales increased more than 30% to about 4.2 million. China also produced nearly three-quarters of the world’s electric cars and more than 80% of its battery cells in 2025.
That divergence explains concerns expressed by some economists and auto-industry analysts that reduced U.S. investment could weaken domestic expertise in batteries and electric drivetrains while competitors continue scaling production. It does not, however, mean the nearly $20 billion cancellation figure can be attributed entirely to Trump administration policy. Reuters found that U.S. EV investment had already begun slowing as consumers proved less willing than expected to accept high prices and charging or range compromises. Automakers are also responding to profitability, interest rates and shifting product preferences. The clearest conclusion is narrower: the policy changes dramatically altered the assumptions behind investments made during the earlier boom, accelerating an industry-wide reassessment whose final shape remains unsettled.
