Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew S. Percoco published an investment note on Wednesday that sent Ford Motor shares climbing 6 percent. He bypassed the manufacturer's struggling electric vehicle segment to praise its stationary energy storage business.

"We believe Ford’s relationship with CATL is an underappreciated strategic competitive advantage for its Energy Storage business," Percoco wrote. By licensing Chinese lithium iron phosphate technology, Ford can secure compliance for a 30 percent Investment Tax Credit on grid-scale projects.

The pivot from mobile to stationary thermodynamic storage is accelerating. In Ohio, General Motors and LG Energy Solution confirmed that only a small fraction of workers will return to the idled Ultium Cells battery plant this month, according to Automotive World. GM previously wrote off $7.6 billion in electric vehicle costs.

Meanwhile, in China's Fujian province, CATL is investing CN¥5 billion to build 40 gigawatt-hours of new sodium-ion battery capacity, per environmental filings in Ningde.

Capital is abandoning the highly subsidized, consumer-driven electric vehicle market in favor of structural grid baseloads. The physics of moving heavy metal boxes across highways is proving economically inferior to the steady, predictable yields of stationary power storage.