Lithium Ion has the potential to convert transportation in the United States over to fully electric green technology. The major remaining barrier is not technical but cost. The cell level component cost is close to half of the overall cost of a Li Ion battery pack for an electric vehicle. Traditionally the cathode material has been the main cost driver but with the move to cathodes containing less Cobalt and Nickle and more Manganese and Iron the anode has become an equal cost driver. Synthetic graphite offers high performance in cycle and calendar life with well controlled production quality but significantly higher cost. Natural graphite materials are generally known to offer lower cost, but with limitations in quality consistency, environmental concerns, and finished cost that is still not low enough to allow Lithium ion to dominate vehicle and grid markets.  This talk will detail the performance drivers and tradeoffs of various types of graphite anode materials and how the traditional graphite industry can bring capital equipment infrastructure and production scale knowledge to produce low cost high performance anode materials.