Tuesday, April 14, 2009

New Battery Assembly Plants in US?

Hybrid and electric automobiles need batteries. These automotive batteries are new to the world components and need new factories. The recession and the stimulus money combined with the push for fossil fuel usage reductions and Green technology incentives have led several states to push to be the new "center of battery production in the world" (my quotes)

Via Kentucky.com

FRANKFORT — A consortium of more than 50 companies wants to build an advanced car battery manufacturing plant in Kentucky that would cost more than $600 million and employ as many as 2,000 people.
Kentucky taxpayers would invest about $200 million in the plant and surrounding area, Gov. Steve Beshear said.

Beshear said the not-for-profit National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Batteries has chosen a 1,551-acre site near Glendale as the location for the first-of-its-kind manufacturing plant of advanced lithium-ion batteries for vehicles.
The plant will make the batteries at cost for consortium members, paying its workers an average salary of more than $40,000.
However, the project depends on the alliance receiving an unspecified amount of funding from the recent federal stimulus package.


And from Michigan
Michigan's hopes of becoming the nation's leader in advanced battery production got a major jolt today as officials announced investments in four new operations that would employ several thousand workers.
The four projects, collectively worth about $1.7 billion, illustrate the state's burgeoning hold on the vehicle battery production market as the world's top automakers invest billions in electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries.
The announced investments come after Gov. Jennifer Granholm last week signed two additional tax credits into law for battery cell R&D and manufacturing, increasing the credits available to companies to $555 million. The incentives stipulate that battery manufacturers can qualify for up to $25 million in incentives a year for four years, or $300 million altogether, provided they open a plant and create at least 300 jobs in the state.

This is technology that the US needs.

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