Charged up: Batteries are the next target in China’s clean-energy conquest

CLEAN-ENERGY PROMOTERS HAILED TESLA’S ANNOUNCEMENT of plans for a Nevada “gigafactory”—a reference to the unit for measuring energy storage—back in 2014 as the dawn of a new American industry. The $5 billion facility would eventually produce millions of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles as well as energy storage on the grid.

But behind the headlines, leading battery researchers and entrepreneurs say the gigafactory represents an exception to the rule