
A dizzying range of machines pirouette perfectly around one another, chopping, welding and packaging: an ensemble that turns raw, rhino-size rolls of copper and aluminum coated with nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite into small but mighty packets - battery cells.

Supervisors peek at tablet screens, tweaking dials, overseeing the robotic orchestra tucked behind thin, sterile walls of glass. In green, taupe, teal and navy uniforms color-coded to their specific role - engineer, operator, maintenance, quality control - masked workers shuffle carts filled with half-finished parts between mechanical stations arranged like cavernous grocery aisles. The sweeping new climate bill just passed in Congress allocates nearly $400 billion over 10 years to encourage the clean energy transition and the growth of factories precisely like this one: A gleaming gray structure, midway through the semirural stretch of Georgia between Atlanta and Greenville, S.C., where the exurbs are encroaching, life is getting more expensive and a job building an electric car doesn’t mean you can afford one, at least not yet.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/52937649/restaurant_inspection.0.jpg)
Inside a colossal new plant, about 13 football fields long, the employees of SK Battery America are at work 24/7, essential players in the high-stakes early days of a worldwide battle to build the motors of the future.
