The all-electric Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept muscle car is shown during its worldwide presentation during Dodge’s Speed Week at the M1 Concourse on August 28. 17 in Michigan. As the popularity of electric vehicles explodes, battery production in the United States is growing rapidly.
Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
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The all-electric Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept muscle car is shown during its worldwide presentation during Dodge’s Speed Week at the M1 Concourse on August 28. 17 in Michigan. As the popularity of electric vehicles explodes, battery production in the United States is growing rapidly.
Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Today, billion-dollar factories make the massive batteries that power electric vehicles are announced so often that even if you follow the automotive industry, it’s hard to keep up with them all.
Have you heard of the one from KORE Power in Arizona? Samsung and Stellantis in Indiana? The Chinese project in Michigan, the Norwegian project in Georgia, the Japanese project in South Carolina?
Or, if you’re no longer impressed with a billion dollars, how about the $5 billion electric vehicle and battery project in Georgia? Not That one – the other a.
All of these factories – plus the even larger ones of Ford and General Motors – are part of a remarkable industrial change.
Automakers are gearing up for electric vehicles, which currently account for about 6% of new vehicle sales in the United States, to capture a huge market share in just a few years. This means that companies will need a considerable number of batteries.
The Atlas Public Policy think tank recently counted all the announced projects Located in the United States, as part of research supported by a trade alliance of automakers, and provided updated numbers to NPR in December. In total, the group had more than $128 billion in announced investments 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.
Beyond the Battery Belt, Production Expands to Many Regions in the United States
Political pressure is on companies involved in battery production to reduce reliability in China and create jobs in the United States. China is currently hosting up to 90% the global production of certain key battery components.
But there are also business reasons to move to the United States, as companies seek to rapidly increase production and avoid supply chain disruptions.
“It helps us with the logistics costs, it helps us with the material costs”, Scott Keogh, then president of Volkswagen of America, told NPR last January that he had shifted production to the United States. “It will be a dramatic, dramatic, dramatic help to locate the supply chain, to have the car here and, frankly, to have just enough production slots.”
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 (price: $2.6 billions of dollars).
Scott Keogh, President and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, and Scotty Reiss, Founder and CEO of Girl’s Guide to Cars attend SXSW at ID. Buzz Stop on March 12 in Austin, Texas. The car is another entry into the growing field of electric vehicles.
Roger Kisby/Getty Images for Volkswagen of America
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Scott Keogh, President and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, and Scotty Reiss, Founder and CEO of Girl’s Guide to Cars attend SXSW at ID. Buzz Stop on March 12 in Austin, Texas. The car is another entry into the growing field of electric vehicles.
Roger Kisby/Getty Images for Volkswagen of America
Many new American projects are underway in the Southeast, earning the region the nickname “the battery belt.” But Atlas analyst Tom Taylor says the trend is geographically broader than that.
“We’ve seen announcements … all over the country, and not just announcements, but really big announcements,” he says. In some states [these are] some of the biggest, if not the biggest, economic development projects in the history of the state. »
In total, the companies say these factories will create more than 150,000 direct jobs, according to Taylor.
Now comes the hard part… opening the plants
It is much easier to announce a new battery factory than to open one. Tesla, which pioneered this type of factory, is currently facing headwinds at its new Berlin Gigafactory.
And while GM successfully opened a new battery plant in Ohio, CEO Mary Barra had to defend slow production there during a recent call with investors.
“Let’s take a step back and recognize that the plant in Ohio is the size of 30 football fields and will employ over 1,000 people,” she said. “Ensuring that all of our staff were there and trained took a little longer than expected.”
Given the challenges of executing projects of this magnitude, it’s fair to view all reported numbers with a hint of skepticism.
And that’s of particular concern to some critics, because not all of those billions of dollars come from corporations — much of it is paid for by taxpayers.
Nearly $14 billion in state and local subsidies have gone to electric vehicle factories and battery factories this year, according to Good Jobs First grant monitoring groupwhich has been criticized for both the size of the subseries and the lack of transparency surrounding them.
But boosters and critics agree on one thing: huge sums of money will likely be pouring into new US-based battery factories for some time to come.
Most of the announcements tallied by Atlas predate a national climate bill passed this summer, which included strong incentives for manufacturing electric vehicles in the United States.
Given that, “it’s reasonable to assume that number is going to continue to increase,” Taylor said.
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