With its plan, once greeted with enthusiasm, to build a $2.4-billion electric vehicle battery plant now scrapped in Michigan, Chinese-owned battery company Gotion Inc.—which had sought to build a factory on nearly 300 acres near Big Rapids—is rejecting a demand to repay nearly $24 million in state grant funds it received to purchase the site. The money was awarded to Gotion—the U.S.-based subsidiary of China-based Gotion High Tech—in 2023 even as local opposition to the factory proposed...