NAATBatt 2025, the 17th annual meeting and conference of NAATBatt International, ended on Thursday, February 20, in Orlando, Florida. Initial reviews by attendees have been overwhelmingly positive. NAATBatt continues its mission of fostering a culture of inclusion and congeniality in the North American battery industry. The objective of that culture is to give NAATBatt members more and better opportunities to grow their respective businesses and build new commercial relationships in North America. NAATBatt 2025 attendees appear to agree that NAATBatt is achieving that objective.
The positive reactions to the meeting contrasted with uncertainty about the state of the industry as a whole. No one really knows what is going on in Washington, D.C. It appears that the Trump Administration has not yet taken a position, favorably or unfavorably, on advanced battery technology. During a first 100 days filled with chaos and radical change, the fact that no one in the Administration seems to be paying attention to batteries may well be a good thing.
Yet while the chaos and radical change in Washington grabs headlines, the presentations made by speakers and NAATBatt member firms during the NAATBatt 2025 meeting underline the fact that Washington is a side show. Technological advances will determine whether the manufacture of advanced battery technology in North America will be commercially successful, not government policy. And those advances keep coming. A session on AI in the battery industry made some interesting predictions about where the most important technology advances are likely to occur in the battery space.
The “What Would a Moonshot in Advanced Batteries Look Like” panel focused less on new technology and more on the importance and challenges of reducing cost. A culture of innovation is the key advantage of North American advanced battery makers. But commercializing that innovation will remain challenging as long as oversupply in China keeps prices artificially and unsustainably low in North America. Panel members Stan Whittingham, Craig Rigby, Joern Tinnemeyer and David Howell agreed upon the centrality of this problem, but could not agree on a solution.
The best part of NAATBatt 2025, as always, was the Member Update Presentations. This year, 170-member companies signed up to give presentations. Collectively those presentations provided a better understanding of who is working on what in the North American advanced battery market than any study or report. The presentations as a whole were as inspiring as they were impressive.
2025 will likely see continued technological progress in advanced batteries and, hopefully, greater certainty about federal government policy supporting it. NAATBatt looks forward to reviewing that progress and that certainty at its 18th annual meeting, NAATBatt 2026, on February 9-12, 2026, at the JW Marriott Starr Pass hotel in Tucson, Arizona.