Interesting, but I think they got some details wrong. I believe the Daimler plant mentioned in the article assembles battery packs using cells made in Asia. The plants in Australia and Thailand are ones I haven't heard about. But they left out the huge Chinese plant that's currently under construction.
I think Boston Energy is a start up from someone who had a new technique for making li-ion cells that was much quicker. I remember reading an article back in 2015 or so and I think the guy who made the discovery was a professor at one of the universities in the Boston area. His primary focus was making batteries for stationary storage though.
With the stationary storage market booming and the automotive market poised to take off, it's difficult to tell which market the cells are being made for. China also has a huge demand for cars domestically with the government strongly encouraging EVs now.
To a large degree that's a different market from the rest of the world. Most car models available in China are either unavailable or only limited availability outside of China. A lot of cars from other developed countries are available in China, but most are niche market cars there.
I can see a time when Chinese companies might be serious players in the global battery market, but they have a huge internal demand right now and the quality of their domestically made cells made by domestic companies can vary a lot which leads major foreign companies to be cautious about buying Chinese made batteries.
When solid state cells come along and replace li-ion, the cheap labor in China might enable them to undercut suppliers from other countries with equivalent quality. But quality li-ion cell manufacturing is labor light and capital intensive so the Chinese don't have any big advantages there. With Elon Musks new focus on automation, by the time solid state cells come into production, Tesla/Panasonic might be making cells with very minimal labor and they will be able to compete head to head with the Chinese on cost and quite possibly better quality than anyone.
It is all interesting. I think the battery makers are anticipating that the Model 3 will flip demand for EVs and set off a revolution in the car business, so they are preparing for the demand spike. This is all new activity in the last year. This time last year the only company that had even made any noises about their own Gigafactory was VW and they weren't talking about reaching full production until 2025.