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OneD reportedly closes Washington pilot site amid tariff and EV-market uncertainty

OneD reportedly shut down its Moses Lake SINANODE pilot facility in May 2025 amid tariff uncertainty and weaker EV-market expectations. The site made silicon-graphite anode material—not complete batteries—and its closure does not mean the wider Moses Lake battery cluster failed.
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OneD Battery Sciences reportedly shut down its SINANODE pilot manufacturing facility in Moses Lake, Washington, in May 2025—less than a year after announcing that the site had been commissioned. The closure was reported by GeekWire, The Information and the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Former CEO Vincent Pluvinage reportedly said tariff-driven weakness in electric-vehicle demand was at least partly responsible. However, the available reporting does not establish that tariffs were the sole cause, or whether the site was permanently closed, sold or repurposed.

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What OneD closed

The reported shutdown involved OneD’s Moses Lake SINANODE pilot production facility. It was not a full-scale electric-vehicle battery-cell factory. The site was designed to produce and scale anode material for lithium-ion batteries.

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Reports describe the operation as two pilot buildings of approximately 12,500 square feet each. GeekWire reported an investment of roughly $15 million to $20 million and planned annual output of about 100 tons of silicon-graphite anode material. The Information described the project as a roughly $20 million pilot plant with material capacity equivalent to approximately 10,000 EV batteries. These figures come from different reports and should not be treated as one fully reconciled specification.

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Current-status note: Public reporting reviewed for this article confirms the reported 2025 shutdown. The sources reviewed do not establish whether the facility later reopened, was sold, was repurposed or was permanently decommissioned, nor do they provide a definitive update on OneD’s corporate operations as of September 2026.

From groundbreaking to shutdown

  • October 2023: OneD broke ground on the Moses Lake project.
  • July 2024: The company said commissioning was complete and pilot operations had begun.
  • August 26, 2024: OneD publicly announced the successful commissioning of its first SINANODE pilot production facility. Its announcement described the site as a step toward scaling the technology.
  • May 2025: The Information reported that the plant had been shut down, with GeekWire publishing its account on May 12 and the Puget Sound Business Journal following on May 13.

The Information characterized the shutdown as occurring about 10 months after production began. OneD’s publicly indexed media room confirms the commissioning milestone but, in the material reviewed, does not include a definitive closure announcement.

What SINANODE does

Most conventional lithium-ion batteries use graphite for the anode, the electrode that stores lithium during charging. Silicon can store substantially more lithium than graphite, creating the potential for higher energy density and faster charging.

The problem is durability and manufacturability. Silicon expands and contracts significantly as it takes in and releases lithium, which can damage the electrode over repeated cycles. OneD’s SINANODE approach integrates silicon nanowires into a graphite-based anode architecture, seeking to capture some of silicon’s capacity advantages without abandoning established graphite-processing methods.

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Commissioning a pilot line does not prove that a technology has reached reliable, sustained commercial production. A pilot facility is intended to demonstrate processes, make customer samples and bridge laboratory development with larger industrial manufacturing.

Why tariffs were cited

Former CEO Vincent Pluvinage reportedly told The Information that the Trump administration’s tariff war was at least partly responsible for the shutdown. The reported mechanism was indirect: tariffs and trade uncertainty weakened EV demand and slowed customer adoption of emerging silicon-anode materials.

That explanation should not be simplified into “tariffs alone forced OneD to close.” The available reporting does not identify a specific tariff rate or tariff classification affecting OneD, nor does it establish whether the main effect was higher input costs, lost orders, delayed automaker programs, reduced financing or weaker projected EV demand.

The closure came amid several overlapping risks for early-stage battery-materials companies:

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  • uncertainty over future EV sales and automaker production plans;
  • long qualification cycles for new battery materials;
  • the cost and risk of moving from pilot output to industrial scale;
  • financing pressure on capital-intensive manufacturing projects; and
  • complexity around specialized inputs, including silane and silicon materials.

Group14 Technologies, another Washington silicon-anode company, also cited tariff and trade uncertainty when slowing construction. But Group14 said demand for its SCC55 material remained strong and that it expected its Moses Lake facility to come online in the second half of 2025.

Leadership changes and layoffs

The Information reported that Pluvinage resigned as CEO, that OneD laid off numerous employees at its Palo Alto headquarters—including members of its research-and-development team—and that the board appointed Jeff Chamberlain, CEO of Volta Energy Technologies, as interim CEO.

The reviewed sources do not establish a precise layoff total or a definitive number of Moses Lake employees affected. GeekWire also reported former OneD employees publicly indicating that they were looking for work.

OneD’s commercial position

OneD had operated for more than a decade and had a relationship with General Motors involving research and investment, with the potential for GM to use the technology in future EV batteries. The company’s strategy centered on licensing or scaling SINANODE through industrial partners rather than becoming a conventional battery-cell manufacturer itself.

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GeekWire reported that OneD had raised nearly $100 million. A 2024 company profile cited approximately $74 million in outside capital. Those figures may reflect different dates or definitions, so they should not be combined as a precise funding total.

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Why Moses Lake mattered

Moses Lake had become an important U.S. cluster for battery materials because it offered relatively inexpensive, low-carbon hydroelectric power, industrial infrastructure, chemical-manufacturing expertise and proximity to silicon and silane suppliers. State and federal efforts to build domestic battery supply chains also helped make the region attractive.

The cluster included OneD, Group14 Technologies and Sila Nanotechnologies. Sila’s Moses Lake facility page said commissioning had begun and that production was expected in the second half of 2025, based on the period covered by the reporting.

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OneD’s shutdown therefore did not mean that all battery manufacturing activity in Moses Lake ended. Group14 said it was slowing, not abandoning, its project. Sila continued to pursue its facility.

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The separate REC Silicon problem

REC Silicon separately stopped polysilicon production at its Moses Lake facility and laid off 224 workers, according to GeekWire. That created an additional complication for the regional battery-materials ecosystem, which depended partly on access to specialized silicon-related inputs.

But REC’s shutdown should not be confused with OneD’s closure, and the available evidence does not show that the Moses Lake REC operation alone made OneD’s pilot plant impossible to operate. In a LinkedIn post, Pluvinage said OneD’s pilot facility received silane modules trucked from REC’s Butte, Montana, facility.

What the closure means for U.S. silicon-anode manufacturing

OneD’s shutdown is a setback for the effort to commercialize silicon-anode materials in the United States, particularly because the company closed its pilot site before reaching the next stage of scale-up. It illustrates the gap between technical promise and commercial viability: a material may offer better battery performance, yet still require years of qualification, dependable customers and substantial capital before a factory can operate at scale.

It is not evidence that silicon anodes have failed or that U.S. battery manufacturing has collapsed. Group14 and Sila were still pursuing Moses Lake projects in the contemporary reporting, and silicon remains attractive because of its potential energy-density advantages.

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The broader lesson is the vulnerability of early-stage domestic manufacturing to policy volatility. Government programs may encourage local production, while tariffs, shifting EV incentives, uncertain demand and disrupted supply chains can make the same projects harder to finance and commercialize.

What remains unknown

  • Whether OneD’s Moses Lake shutdown was temporary or permanent.
  • What happened to the facility, equipment and pilot-line assets.
  • Whether OneD continued pilot work at another location.
  • How many employees were affected in total.
  • Whether GM-related research continued after the leadership changes.
  • Whether tariffs affected OneD directly through costs or indirectly through customers, demand and financing.

The confirmed story is narrower than a claim that OneD or the U.S. silicon-anode industry disappeared: a reported pilot-site shutdown, leadership changes and layoffs occurred amid tariff uncertainty, EV-market concerns and the difficult economics of scaling new battery materials.

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