
There’s an underlying hypocrisy in America’s quest to develop low-cost electric cars. On one side, there’s China-phobia. Plenty is being done on the policy side to protect the century-old homegrown car industry from a potential influx of cheap Chinese EVs. On the other side, automakers have realized that without the expertise of Chinese battery giants, they can’t really solve the affordability equation. Ford’s partnership with CATL is a screaming example of this contradiction.