December has been a big month for battery-making in the US.

Automakers are rolling out their plans to ramp up EV production, and that means they all need more lithium-ion batteries. A lot more.

These planned battery facilities are important as the US tries to bolster its EV supply chain. In June, the US Department of Energy issued a blueprint for domestic lithium-battery production and found that the US had less than 10% of the global manufacturing capacity for battery components and cells.

Today battery plants in the US have a production capacity of 57 gigawatt hours, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. By 2030, new battery facilities are expected to bring the domestic total to more than 700 gigawatt hours from 21 plants.

• UK–based EV maker Arrival is planning a battery module assembly plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, the company announced on Dec. 6. Arrival will spend $11.5 million on the microfactory—one of 31 microfactories that it hopes to build by 2024. The Charlotte plant is slated to begin production in the third quarter of 2022 and should be able to provide 350,000 battery modules annually for Arrival’s commercial EVs.
• Toyota is also building in North Carolina. On Dec. 6, the Japanese automaker announced a $1.29 billion battery facility outside of Greensboro that will begin production in 2025. Toyota plans to spend $3.4 billion on automotive battery development and manufacturing in the US over the next decade. This plant should be able to produce batteries for about 800,000 EVs per year when it comes online.
• Last week, Rivian revealed plans for a $5 billion EV manufacturing site that will include a battery-cell production facility outside Atlanta. The company aims to build 400,000 EVs per year there when it comes online in 2024.

But before batteries…

To meet ambitious EV sales goals, automakers are facing the task of building out a supply chain that is not yet established—and that goes beyond just manufacturing batteries.

“Two years ago, they weren’t even thinking about batteries,” Simon Moores, CEO of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, told us of OEMs earlier this month. “They are thinking about batteries now, which is good. But they’re still not thinking about raw materials.”

Looking ahead: Don’t expect battery investment to slow down in the US as both business and government leaders look to shore up the EV supply chain. The federal infrastructure bill passed in November includes $7 billion in grants for the raw materials, manufacturing facilities, and recycling operations needed to grow battery production domestically.

Click here to read the full story.—GD

As the climate crisis continues to worsen, investors are throwing bigger and bigger piles of money at the problem.

Since 2013 through the first half of 2021, over $222 billion has been invested in climate tech worldwide, per a new PwC report, as companies try to create tech that helps keep the planet below the 1.5 degrees Celsius recommended by the Paris Climate Agreement.

• Over $87.5 billion—or 39%—of that was invested between H2 2020 and H1 2021.
• That’s a 210% jump in funding from the prior 12-month period.

Climate-tech startups have proliferated in this eight-year window, with over 3,000 climate-tech startups in a variety of fields, like renewable energy or sustainable food.

PwC’s report identified over 6,000 unique investors since 2013. Most of the funding came from US investors, which dished out $56.6 billion between H2 2020 and H1 2021—nearly 65% of all climate tech funding for that period.

• European investors landed the no. 2 spot by spending $18.3 billion, while China came in third raising $9 billion.

Unicorn check: The number of climate-tech unicorns grew to 78 in 2021, up from 43 last year. This year, mobility and transport unicorns totaled 43, while food agriculture and land-use startups numbered 13, industry, manufacturing and resource-use startups had 10 unicorns, and energy startups numbered nine.

To be fair…Venture funding has significantly broken records in basically every category all year, and there has been a proliferation of unicorn companies since the start of the year. But climate tech is capturing a significant share of that money: It accounted for 14 cents of every venture-capital dollar spent between H1 2020 and H1 2021.

Click here to view on-site.—JM

Last week, we asked you all to weigh in on your willingness to hop into a fully driverless vehicle and ride around town.

Unsurprisingly, you all are quite willing to do so. Out of 502 respondents, 39% said they were extremely likely to ride in one, given the opportunity, and 34% said they were likely to do so.

• Just 18% said they were unlikely or very unlikely to do so.
• That outpaces the willingness of the average US adult, per a March 2021 Morning Brew–Harris Poll survey: 19% said they’re very likely to ride in an AV given the chance, while 31% said they’re somewhat likely. Almost a third (30%) said they’re not very likely, and 20% said they’re not at all likely.

As for when you think you’ll get that chance, 39% of you feel we’ll have true robotaxi fleets available to consumers between 2025 and 2029, while 33% think it’ll happen between 2030 and 2034, and 17% think we’re waiting until at least 2035 for anything like that.

• Just 2% of you said “never.”

Click here to take this week’s poll on the most overlooked/overhyped trends of 2021.

Stat: Chipmakers will spend an estimated $152 billion on new fabs and equipment this year, up from $113 billion last year.

Quote: “I did not have any [media] interviews in the first 18 years of my career—nothing. Nobody was interested.”—Guido Uberreiter, who oversees a GlobalFoundries chipmaking plant in Dresden, Germany, to the Financial Times

Read: An AI tool meant to reduce bias in startup investing could exacerbate it, experts say.

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Monday: Jurors will begin deliberating on the trial of Elizabeth Holmes.

Friday: The James Webb Space Telescope—a bigger and better replacement for the iconic Hubble Space Telescope—could launch. The $10 billion telescope has been delayed for years, but this week could finally mark its ascent to the stars.

Wednesday-1/3: Morning Brew is on holiday break, though you’ll still get a few newsletters during this time.

About a month after appointing three prominent, critical AI experts as advisors, FTC chair Lina Khan said last week that she wants the agency to consider regulations around “algorithmic decision-making that may result in unlawful discrimination.”

• Last month, the New York City Council passed a law that would require audits of hiring algorithms, which have been shown to perpetuate racial and gender biases.
• And a few weeks ago, Washington, DC’s attorney general introduced a bill to ban algorithmic discrimination more broadly.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• An AI tool meant to reduce bias in investing could exacerbate it, experts say
• Thousands of diesel school buses could get a second life as electric ones
• A lithium shortage is coming, and automakers might be unprepared