America Doesn’t Have To Depend on China To Build Chips and Batteries

To view the full Op-ed by Diana Furchtgott-Roth on the Heritage website, click here.
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For too long, America has been sleepwalking into a dangerous dependency on Chinese battery technology. It’s not just about electric vehicles or smartphones anymore. It’s about national security, economic resilience, and the ability to stand firm in the face of geopolitical tension. And make no mistake: the stakes are high.

Chinese-made batteries, particularly those embedded with sensitive components, pose a dual threat. First, they can serve as conduits for data collection, quietly siphoning information from American infrastructure. Second, in the event of a conflict, such as over Taiwan, China could simply flip the switch and cut off battery supplies, crippling everything from our energy grid to our defense systems.

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A quiet revolution is underway in battery chemistry. Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries are rapidly overtaking their Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) counterparts. They’re up to 50 percent less expensive. They last longer, and because of their lower energy density, they’re less prone to the fiery meltdowns that have plagued NMC designs.

More importantly, the materials needed for LFP batteries—lithium, graphite, iron, and phosphate—can be sourced right here in the United States. Lithium from North Carolina, Nevada, and Arkansas. Iron from Minnesota and North Dakota. Phosphate from Florida and Louisiana. No need to rely on cobalt from the Congo or nickel from Indonesia and Russia. No need to play supply chain roulette with autocratic regimes.

LFP batteries aren’t just for cars. They power data centers, grid-scale energy storage, EV charging stations, and homes. They’re also vital for defense applications, from aerial drones to underwater vehicles. Yet despite the construction of multiple LFP gigafactories by Tesla, Ford, GM, LG, and Samsung, one critical piece remains missing: the cathode active material (CAM). It’s still made in China.

Enter Sparkz, an American startup with a solution. Sparkz has developed a domestic technology to produce CAM for LFP batteries at scale, with performance and cost parity to Chinese products. A Sacramento plant is already in production. Now, Sparkz is preparing to scale up to a 44,000-ton capacity by 2029, with a main plant in Oklahoma, and other satellite plants throughout the United States.

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For media inquiries, please contact Abby Rodriguez at media@sparkz.energy.

Founder & CEO

Dr. Sanjiv Malhotra

Dr. Sanjiv Malhotra is the founder and CEO of Sparkz—the battery start-up reinventing the energy supply chain.

 

Malhotra has been a leader in the energy sector for nearly three decades as a founder, investor and executive. Most recently, he served as the inaugural director for the Energy Investor Center at the U.S Department of Energy (DOE), serving under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

 

At DOE, Malhotra led the Obama Administration’s initiative to boost public-private partnerships to accelerate the commercialization of technologies developed in national research centers like Oak Ridge National Labs.

 

Malhotra was recruited to the Department of Energy after a successful exit of Oorja Protonics—the world leader in methanol fuel cells—which he founded and led as CEO for 10 years. Oorja raised $50 Million in equity financing from leading VCs such as Sequoia, DAG Ventures, Artis Capital and others during his tenure. He boosted Oorja’s revenue and profitability growth, while expanding operations globally in Japan, China, South Africa, Mexico, and India.

 

Oorja was acquired in 2014 by the Private Equity firm MinXing Growth Fund.

 

As an investor and consultant, Malhotra has worked at leading venture capital firms, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers as an advisor on clean energy and advanced materials.

 

Earlier in his career, Malhotra led the engineering and product development team at H Power, a pioneer in hydrogen fuel cells. As part of the management team, he managed the successful IPO, which raised more than $100 million in August 2000.

 

He began his career as a post-doctoral fellow at the renowned Lawrence Berkeley National Labs on electrochemical storage systems. Dr. Malhotra has authored seven patents and more than 40 publications in various fields of energy storage technology and materials. He holds a PhD in chemical engineering and an M.B.A from University of Iowa.