Johnson Controls sold their automotive battery business to Clarios in 2019. Not any batteries now is made by Johnson Controls.
True. It my be of further interest that Clarios is owned by Brookfield Asset Management, a mega private equity firm, which is looking to spin it out in an IPO in classic private equity fashion--buy it and load it with the acquisition debt, spiff it up with some operating efficiencies and financial engineering, then sell it in the public market for a profit.
“The maker of Interstate Batteries is Brookfield Business Partners and Exide Technologies. The Interstate Battery System of America, Inc., a privately owned battery marketing and distribution company in the United States, markets these batteries.
There was a previous report that Johnson Controls is making 65% of Interstate Batteries. However, this is no longer true. Johnson Controls is not currently making these batteries. The company Brookfield and Exide Technologies has already taken over this job.”
Of perhaps further interest, Brookfield Business Partners is part of Brookfield Asset Management which markets and distributes Interstate batteries while Exide manufactures them as a separate entity. That puts Clarios and Excide partially under the same roof for the time being. Excide is now owned by another private equity firm, Atlas Holdings, who bought the company out of bankruptcy, this courtesy of Wikipedia:
"On May 19, 2020, Exide (and four subsidiaries) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to facilitate the sale of its North American assets.[49] In July 2020, Exide sold its North American assets to Atlas Holdings.[50]
On August 25, 2020, Atlas Holdings launched standalone companies Stryten Manufacturing and Element Resources following its acquisition of substantially all the operating assets of the Americas business of Exide Technologies, LLC. The transaction completes a court-supervised sale process, pursuant to Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy code. [51]"
Given all of this private equity musical chairs, loyalty to one of the involved brand names that happen to be printed on batteries is more or less worthless. Go with the current reviews, CR or whatever other reliable sources one can find. The rest is TMI of dubious value.