The all-electric muscle car Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept made its world premiere during Dodge Speed Week at Concourse M1 on August 17, 2022 in Michigan. As the popularity of electric vehicles explodes, U.S. battery production is growing rapidly.
Photo of Bill Pugliano/Getty
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The all-electric muscle car Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept made its world premiere during Dodge Speed Week at Concourse M1 on August 17, 2022 in Michigan. As the popularity of electric vehicles explodes, U.S. battery production is growing rapidly.
Photo of Bill Pugliano/Getty
Today, factories cost billions of dollars to produce giant batteries that power electric vehicles published so often that — even if you follow the auto industry — it’s hard to keep track of them all.
Have you heard of one from KORE Power in Arizona? Samsung and Stellantis in Indiana? Chinese project in Michigan, Norwegian project in Georgia, Japanese project in South Carolina?
Or, if you’re not impressed with a billion dollars anymore, what about the $5 billion electric vehicle and battery project in Georgia? No, it’s not that – the is different one.
All of these plants — plus even larger ones from Ford and General Motors — are part of a remarkable industrial transformation.
Automakers are gearing up for electric vehicles, which now account for about 6% of new-vehicle sales in the United States, to conquer a massive market share in just a few years. That means companies will need an extremely large number of batteries.
The recent Atlas Public public policy consultancy tally all published projects located in the United States, was part of research supported by an auto trade alliance and provided updated figures for NPR in December. All told, the team counted over $128 billion head Investments were announced in electric vehicle factories, battery factories, and battery recycling.
In 2022 alone, companies announced more than $73 billion in planned projects — more than three times the previous record, set in 2021.
In addition to the battery belt, production is spreading to many parts of the United States
Political pressure is mounting on companies involved in battery production to reduce dependence on China and create jobs for Americans. China is currently hosting as much as 90% global production of several key components for batteries.
But there are also business reasons to move to the US, as companies look to quickly expand production and avoid supply chain disruptions.
“It helps us with logistics costs, it helps us with material costs,” Volkswagen of America’s then-president Scott Keogh told NPR last January about moving production to the United States. “It’s going to be a dramatic, dramatic, dramatic help when the supply chain is localized, there’s cars here, and frankly, just having enough manufacturing space.”
In the last year, the company opened a new electrical assembly line at its Chattanooga plant (conversion cost: $800 million), with batteries sourced from a new SKI plant a few hours away in Georgia (cost: $2.6 billion). ).
Scott Keogh, President & CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, and Scotty Reiss, Founder and CEO of The Women’s Automotive Guide attend SXSW at ID. Buzz Stop on March 12, 2022 in Austin, Texas. The vehicle is another entry into the burgeoning EV field.
Roger Kisby/Getty image for Volkswagen of A
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Roger Kisby/Getty image for Volkswagen of A
Scott Keogh, President & CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, and Scotty Reiss, Founder and CEO of The Women’s Automotive Guide attend SXSW at ID. Buzz Stop on March 12, 2022 in Austin, Texas. The vehicle is another entry into the burgeoning EV field.
Roger Kisby/Getty image for Volkswagen of A
Many new US projects are underway in the Southeast, earning the region the nickname “battery belt”. But Tom Taylor, an analyst with Atlas, says the trend goes beyond that geographically.
“We’ve seen announcements… all over the country, and not just announcements, but announcements that are really important,” he said. “In some states [these are] some of the largest, if not the largest, economic development projects in the history of the state.”
All told, the companies say those factories will create more than 150,000 direct jobs, according to Taylor.
Now comes the hard part… opening factories
Announcement of a new battery factory is much easier than opening an actual factory. Tesla, the company that pioneered these crops, is now facing headwinds at the new Berlin Gigafactory.
And while GM has successfully opened a new battery plant in Ohio, CEO Mary Barra had to defend the slow production pace there on a recent call with investors.
“Look back and realize that the factory in Ohio is about the size of 30 football fields and will employ more than 1,000 people,” she said. “Making sure we had everyone there and training took longer than expected.”
Given the challenges of undertaking such large projects, it’s only fair to look at all the published figures with some skepticism.
And that’s particularly concerning to some critics, because not all of those billions of dollars have come from companies — a large portion of which is taxpayers’ money.
Nearly $14 billion in state and local subsidies went to electric vehicle and battery factories this year, according to the report. Good Jobs First subsidy monitoring groupcriticized both the size of the subsidies and the lack of transparency around them.
But advocates and critics alike agree on one thing: large sums of money are likely to be pouring into new US-based battery factories for a while.
Most of the announcements compiled by Atlas precede the national climate bill passed this summer, which includes major incentives for the US-based electric vehicle industry.
Therefore, “it’s a reasonable assumption that that number will continue to grow,” Taylor said.
