Read the rest of this piece at Flyover Coalition.ĭale Buss is founder and executive director of The Flyover Coalition, a not-for-profit organization aimed at helping revitalize and promote the economy, companies and people of the region between the Appalachians and Rockies, the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes. The mid-South plant locations then made a lot of sense because they were in states unfriendly to unions and yet close enough to the supplier industry’s existing infrastructure, centered in the Upper Midwest, to make sense logistically.įorty years later, there’s similar logic to Ford’s decision in favor of Tennessee and Kentucky, including relatively inexpensive supplies of the massive amounts of electricity it takes to make batteries for all-electric vehicles.Īt the same time, Ford’s new plants now will be in the relative center of a massively expanded auto-industry supply base and assembly-plant network that now occupies essentially all of flyover country - from a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama to a Kia plant in Georgia from new GM battery plants planned for Ohio to the company's long-existing assembly plant in Missouri and from the Subaru plant in Lafayette, Indiana, to the Toyota plant about 170 miles to the south in Princeton, Indiana. Meanwhile, Volkswagen – ill-fatedly, as it turned out – had refurbished a plant in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, and began churning out little cars in 1978. plant, near Georgetown, Kentucky and General Motors plunked its Saturn complex near Nashville. plant, near Smyrna, Tennessee Toyota built its first U.S. Indeed, the froth these days as automakers begin to build out their EV-production infrastructure is reminiscent of what happened 40 years ago across the heartland when global players were all trying to figure out how to build and sell small cars profitably in an American market that was being choked by high gasoline prices. “The governor repeatedly has said this is a key area for us.” “The governor’s goal is to build an ecosystem, not only to build vehicles but the supply chain,” one senior administration official told Crain’s Chicago Business. Electric-truck startup Rivian put its first plant in Normal, Illinois, in an old Mitsubishi facility, and now Pritzker wants to convince Samsung to build a massive battery factory next door. Pritzker’s strategizing behind a plan that would boost the state’s efforts to attract its own share of EV investments. Meanwhile, in Illinois, the announcement goosed Governor J.B. Quick analysis by the News concluded that Michigan’s comparatively high industrial-power costs, lack of large-scale tracts suitable for modern developments, and its “difficulty quickly mustering the kinds of financial incentive packages that can help close big deals” all contributed to the state’s failure to land Ford’s plants. “I was shocked, very disappointed to see” that Ford decided to locate the plants out of state, U.S. Michigan officials, for example, were left explaining how they couldn't land such a watershed new investment by an important homegrown company, and reminding everyone that automakers are continuing to invest other billions across the state. The repercussions were immediate in other states that lost out. Every nation will know where Kentucky is and who we are.” Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, predicted “these enormous plants will capture the attention of the entire world. “West Tennessee will now lead the nation in the next American industrial revolution, said Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee in a news conference, with actually not too much hyperbole. The two states came up with nearly $1 billion in financial incentives for the two companies to plunk the facilities and an estimated 11,000 new direct jobs in their precincts. Kentucky and Tennessee scrapped to land the $11.4 billion in new industrial production that will be located northeast of Memphis and in Glendale, Kentucky, including commitments by SK Innovation, Ford’s battery supplier. It’s also a mammoth declaration by America’s iconic carmaker that the future of the auto business in the United States will remain anchored in flyover country. CEO to the fast-gaining propulsion technology. Jim Farley’s decision to invest $7 billion in green-field new battery and electric-vehicle assembly plants in the mid-South is not only a huge new commitment by the Ford Motor Co.
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