The National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture was formed in December 2008 as an alliance between 14 battery makers and the Argonne National Laboratory to improve the competitiveness of the American battery industry and to expedite the development of advanced lithium ion battery technology. The alliance is modeled after SEMATECH, formed in 1987 by a group of U.S. semiconductor manufacturers with $1 billion in federal funding to build manufacturing plants to compete with Asian competition.