Embattled Chinese battery maker Gotion vows ‘more vocal’ US strategy after filing lawsuit in Michigan

‘People have been hearing a lot of mistruths’ about the company and its planned US$2.3 billion EV plant, top North American official tells Post

Gotion’s more outspoken tack signals strategic shift, having previously tried to address concerns by attending events hosted by township officials

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Opponents of Gotion’s project gathered in Green Charter Township in Michigan in November 2023. Photo: Facebook

Published: 5:00am, 19 Mar 2024Updated: 5:03am, 19 Mar 2024

Days after a Chinese battery maker sued a Michigan community for breach of contract over a US$2.3 billion electric-vehicle plant it aims to build there, the company’s top North American official told the Post it was now going to be more outspoken.

“I think people have been hearing a lot of mistruths, fabrications for the last nine months,” Chuck Thelen, vice-president of North American manufacturing for Gotion Inc, said in an interview on Monday.

“We’re now on a mission to make sure they hear the truth, even though we’ve been speaking the truth, or [people are] not really hearing it. And now we’re going to be a little more vocal.”

Saying he had “personally experienced a great deal of bullying from a number of people”, Thelen portrayed Gotion as trying to “dispel the whole Asia-hate thing that we’re definitely seeing around the United States right now and trying to show why it’s misplaced”.

On Saturday, for example, a post on X (formerly Twitter) slammed Thelen as a “useful idiot for the Chinese Communist Party; chronic liar about the Gotion project”.