In the race to make the lithium-ion batteries that will run the electric cars of the future, the United States is losing to Asian countries, and start-ups and big companies need to band together to build a lithium-ion battery industry in the United States, says Jim Greenberger.

Mr. Greenberger, a lawyer specializing in clean technology, organized a new alliance of lithium-ion battery makers made up of 14 big companies, like 3M, and start-ups, like ActaCell.

“The great age of automobiles lies ahead of us, not behind us,” said Mr. Greenberger, who heads the clean-tech practice at the law firm Reed Smith and advises clean-technology venture capital firms and start-ups.

The group, called the National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture, took a page from the chip industry’s playbook. It is modeled after Sematech, which in the 1980s raised $990 million in federal grants and private investment to keep semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.

The alliance plans to introduce a proposal in Congress in January to raise $1 billion to $2 billion for lithium-ion battery manufacturing in the United States.

The ultimate goal, according to Mr. Greenberger: “We’re going to start to be able to manufacture cars in the United States again, on a basis that’s competitive with the Asians.”

Lithium-ion batteries, besides eliminating the need for petroleum, are three times as efficient as internal combustion engines in typical cars, Mr. Greenberger said. Furthermore, they can be charged by alternative sources of energy like wind or solar.

Several large companies, including General Electric and Sanyo, which was just bought by Panasonic, have been working on lithium-ion batteries. Many start-up companies have recently emerged, too, including Imara, which we wrote about last week.

The future of these batteries will depend on start-ups “because it’s a start-up industry,” Mr. Greenberger said. “We are five years behind Asians in our ability to manufacture the cells.”

The United States has the technology to develop lithium-ion batteries, he said. The two biggest challenges the industry faces, though, are building prototypes to simulate new batteries and then building the factories required to manufacture the batteries.

“We’re really good on theory and basic science,” he said. “It’s putting that theory into production where we’re falling down.”

One reason is that no major United States auto manufacturer is yet buying lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, so there is not enough money to build prototypes and factories.

Yet car manufacturing will eventually move where the batteries are made, he said. “If we’re dependent on Asia, transportation and even defense will gravitate there.”

The initiative will require United States companies to shift their individualistic way of thinking and could fail if certain companies try to strike out on their own and raise money from their state representatives instead of going after a pool of government money for all lithium-ion battery makers, Mr. Greenberger warned.

“We’re trying through the alliance to come up with a way and mechanism to work on an industrywide basis rather than everyone off for themselves,” he said. Otherwise, each company “will be crushed in turn by the Panasonics of the world.”