Honda Motor Co. and LG Energy Solution announced Oct. 11 a joint-venture plan to invest up to $4.4 billion to build electric-vehicle batteries in Fayette County, Ohio, creating 2,200 jobs.
The plant will produce pouch-type lithium batteries with 40 gigawatt-hours of annual production capacity. Construction is set to begin in early 2023 with production starting by the end of 2025.
For the better part of the last decade, Alabama has been turning itself into a place where electric cars are made.
Now the state just needs to become a place where more electric vehicles are driven.
The number of electric cars in Alabama is expected to balloon in the coming years, meaning new challenges, including installing charging stations, maintaining the power grid, and convincing consumers that their transportation needs can be met without gasoline.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey says the bus is leaving the station and the bus is electric.
Delivering opening remarks at an electric vehicle summit in Birmingham today, Ivey told the crowd of a few hundred attendees that the future of transportation was electric, and that Alabama is being proactive in embracing the changing automotive markets.
“We need to lean in on this new technology for the sake of our economy tomorrow,” Ivey said.
Alabama has become “an industry giant” in electric vehicle manufacturing, according to Gov. Kay Ivey.
Ivey’s opening remarks Wednesday kick-started the inaugural Drive Electric Alabama EV Summit in Birmingham.
The summit featured discussions regarding state leadership’s efforts to attract EV automotive manufacturers to Alabama along other EV-related topics.
Panels of industry experts, elected officials and manufacturing executives touched on topics related to charging technology, EV charging’s effect on the power grid, among other key issues.
Autocar has delivered its first Alabama-built electric vehicle, a signal that the manufacturer of specialized trucks sees a future in EVs.
Autocar’s first battery-electric terminal tractor, the E-ACTT, went to Old Dominion Freight Line for use at its Rialto, California, facility.
Autocar produces specialized severe-duty vocational vehicles for a wide range of industrial applications. Its Alabama plant is the first to add EV production to the mix.
The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs is leading the effort to bulk up the state’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
“The buyer that has purchased these cars needs to have the same opportunities as those that are driving gasoline-powered engines,” said ADECA Director Kenneth Boswell.
More electric cars are expected to be on roadways. A report from Reuters estimated that EV sales could reach 33 % globally by 2028, compared to 8 % in 2021. In the US, the White House set the goal for 50 % of new vehicles sold in 2030 to be electric.
Mercedes-Benz has launched production of the all-electric luxury EQS SUV at its Tuscaloosa County plant, part of a global strategy of next-generation technology that is ushering in a new era for Alabama’s auto industry.
Mercedes has invested $7 billion in the state since it arrived in the early 1990s, and Alabama workers began producing the M-Class SUV in 1997. Multiple expansions, new model launches and innovation upgrades have followed, with more than 4 million vehicles shipped from the plant around the world.
Twenty-five years after Mercedes-Benz began making vehicles in Alabama, the German automaker ushered in its newest phase today, as the Vance plant in Tuscaloosa County celebrated the beginning of electric SUV production.
It was the cap on five years of activity and more than $1 billion pumped into the operation, which also added an electric battery factory in Bibb County earlier this year, as well as 1,000 more employees.
DETROIT (AP) — The surprise deal by Senate Democrats on a slimmed-down bill to support families, boost infrastructure and fight climate change also is likely to jump-start sales of electric vehicles.