Surely the Chinese market being hyper competitive and in a price war would imply bosses selling to this market needing to cut costs even when doing so comes with the consequence of reduced long-term quality?
They are years behind with sodium ion which is being mass produced in China already and being used in ultra cheap EVs that simply don't exist in the US market.
And then solid state batteries are also something that China looks to be on track with to start producing in larger volumes in the next year (low volume production is already happening). And that's despite companies like Amprius, Quantumscape, etc. being based in the US. In short, the US car manufacturing industry has long lost its leadership position. And that's including Tesla that until a few years ago was producing better EVs than others. No longer true and they are struggling to keep up currently.
By treating batteries as a component roughly on par with an air filter, US manufacturers have lost out on multiple R&D cycles and put themselves in such a poor strategic position that it's unlikely they will be able to survive without major restructuring.