Obama will attend the groundbreaking in Holland, Michigan, of a factory for Compact Power Inc., a unit of South Korea's LG Chem Ltd. that got a $151 million stimulus grant to make electric-vehicle batteries.

In 2009, the plug-in vehicle market gained unprecedented federal support. In addition to President Obama's proclamation of 1,000,000 plug-in cars by 2015, several newcomer companies, including Tesla, Fisker, A123, and Johnson Controls-Saft, received multimillion dollar grants and/or loans to...