Chinese Battery Maker Refuses to Repay $24M in State Funds Over Failed EV Plant | Columbus Ohio Dump Trucks

The uproar over the factory that would have produced cathodes and anodes for use in electric vehicle batteries led to a recall election in November 2023. Five township officials who supported the project were ousted and two others resigned. 

The factory was planned to have six buildings spanning 2 million sq ft and would have created 2,350 jobs, Gotion said. 

The call for repayment by the Michigan State Attorney General's office was issued after the Michigan Economic Development Corporation sent a default notice to Gotion in September 2025 noting that no construction or development activities had occurred on the site for more than 120 consecutive days.

The Jan. 30 letter signed by Assistant Attorney General James Ziehmer informed Gotion that it is acting as a debt collector to recover funds on behalf of the Michigan Strategic Fund, which promotes economic development in the state.  

“. . . The Michigan Strategic Fund notified you of multiple events of default” and “you were provided 30 days to cure the events of default,” Ziehmer wrote. 

The funds came from the Strategic Site Readiness Program (SSRP), used to prepare large-scale sites for development.

Attorney Mark Heusel, representing Gotion, responded to the letter on Feb. 10, alleging that Green Charter Township, where the factory would have been located, is in breach of a development agreement with Gotion and that the Charlotte NC dump trucks company has suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in damages because of it.

Calling it the only “equitable solution,” Heusel wrote that “some of those damages can be mitigated if either Green Charter Township purchases the land, or the state takes the land back for its inventory of developable sites and forgives the repayment obligation you are now seeking.”

In a lawsuit pending in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal, Gotion seeks to enforce a development agreement, which it says the township breached after the new township leadership rescinded support for extending municipal water lines to pump 715,000 gallons of water a day to the factory,  

One plant opponent, Lori Brock, a real estate agent who owns a horse farm about a half-mile from the site and who hosted rallies against the factory, alleges that the development agreement is not valid because it was signed by the previous township supervisor but never voted on by the township board.

“He just signed it without bringing it back to the board. So we don’t believe there was ever a development agreement to begin with. If you think there was one, it was based on lies,” she says. 

Heusel contends that the project "was subjected to an onslaught of attacks, threats, unfounded accusations and anti-China sentiment. The fact that a substantial project like this, which was fully supported by both local and state officials, could be blocked by a vocal minority of dissenters should quell the appetite of anyone looking to develop in the state."

Brock alleges that Gotion lied about such issues as how many jobs the factory would create, how much those jobs would pay and about the company's ties to the CCP.  She says this is a case of David versus Goliath and that the township, which has a population of about 3,600 people, is now in debt due to the legal case.

“And now we're stuck with a $500,000 bill for attorneys against them and we never wanted them to begin with,” she says.