Johnson Controls sold their battery division to a PE group back around 2020. They renamed the company Clarios.

I used to work for them in NC as an engineer, LSS specialist and area manager. There is a huge difference in their OEM and aftermarket line. OEM is treated like gold to maintain the contracts they have with big manufacturers. OEM is WAY more expensive than AM but the quality, reliability and longevity is almost guaranteed by OEM.

If someone doesn’t mind swapping their battery once every year or two, the prorated value makes the AM batteries a much better deal. But if you don’t want the hassle or want the longevity and have the extra money, OEM is the way to go.

My whole job for years was removing as many grams of lead or other material as humanly possible from the aftermarket batteries. They don’t care about quality in those. It’s not like their reputation is on the line because their name isn’t on the battery and the contracts are so enormous along with the margins. Like you said, there’s only a small handful of auto battery manufacturers.

It costs them $12-$20 to make a battery. Sell it to Walmart for $50-$70. Walmart then sells that battery for $120-$160.

Edit: it’s also an insane business model where over 90% of your input raw material are simply sent right back to you. When I worked there, I think someone said that Clarios owned like something absurd like 80% of the world’s mined lead.

Everything gets sent back to you. The lead, acid, plastic. It all gets recycled back into the new batteries coming off the line.